Ambulance Company Owner Sentenced to 15 Years in Federal Prison
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- Published on Wednesday, 05 January 2011 18:07
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Ambulance Company Owner and Management Sentenced to Federal Prison
The owner and management team for Royal Ambulance Service, Inc. and First Choice EMS, Inc. were all sentenced for fraudulently billing the federal healthcare program for patients being transported to dialysis.
The owner of the ambulance companies, Muhammed Nasiru Usman, 50, of Arlington, Texas, was sentenced in October 2010 to 15 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.3 million in restitution for his part in the fraudulent scheme. He was found guilty in May 2010 of 14 counts of various charges including healthcare fraud and money laundering.
co-defendant, David McNac of Dallas, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in April 2010. He as sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.3 million in restitution.
Shaun Outen, the operations director, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to pay approximately $360,000 in restitution for committing healthcare fraud. He had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in March, 2010.
Royal and First Choice primarily transferred patients on a non-emergency basis to and from dialysis treatments three times per week. The government presented evidence that Usman, Outen and McNac conspired to defraud Medicare and Medicaid by submitting fraudulent claims related to the transportation of dialysis patients. As part of the conspiracy, the defendants told Royal and First Choice employees to omit facts when documenting their transports of Royal and First Choice patients, such as whether the patients walked to the ambulance, in order to qualify the transports for reimbursement. Additionally, many of the companies’ records revealed that patients simply rode to their appointments in a captain’s chair in the back of the ambulance rather than lying on a stretcher.
Source:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRel11/outen_HCF_sen_pr.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/03/22/daily39.html
http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2010/mar/25/bc-tx-medicare-ambulance-fraud/?news®ion-state