SAN FRANCISCO — An Oakland, Calif., woman was sentenced April 26 to 57 months in prison for her role in a scam to bill Medicare for more than $1.2 million in fraudulent claims for power wheelchairs, HHS and the Department of Justice announced.
Donna K. Wells, 52, was convicted in November 2010 of health care fraud after a week-long jury trial in the Central District of California. In addition to her prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer sentenced Wells to three years of supervised release and ordered her to pay $240,380 in restitution.
According to beneficiaries who testified at her trial, the lengths to which Wells went in enticing them shows just how far some scammers will go.
Prosecutors said Wells worked the streets and low-income, senior living communities of Oakland in her recruiting effort. Beneficiaries who testified said Wells approached them on the street, at the store or even waited in the lobbies of their buildings to offer them free power chairs in exchange for allowing her to copy their Medicare and California identification cards. Judge Fischer found that Wells purposely misled beneficiaries into believing that she worked for Medicare or another government agency.
Wells then sold the information she got for $400 to $500 per beneficiary. The individuals who bought the information fabricated prescriptions and medical documents that in turn were sold to fraudulent DME companies to submit false claims for power chairs and other DME, the DOJ said in a press release. One of those companies was Maydads Medical Supply of Arleta, Calif., which was owned by Wells' co-defendant Sylvester ljewere, who was sentenced in October to a 46-month prison term for Medicare fraud.
In imposing Wells' sentence, Judge Fischer found that Wells was responsible for more than $1.2 million in false claims that were submitted to Medicare for approximately 200 beneficiaries.
The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities, and supervised by the Criminal Division's Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.