LOS ANGELES – A Hawthorne woman who ran a company that submitted more than $7 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare – primarily for power wheelchairs that were not needed by patients – and caused the government health insurance program to lose nearly $3.5 million has been sentenced to 78 months in federal prison.
Adeline Ekwebelem, 51, was sentenced yesterday afternoon by United States District Court Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, who also ordered the defendant to pay $3.45 million in restitution to the Medicare program.
The evidence presented at a seven-day trial last September showed that Ekwebelem’s Gardena-based durable medical equipment (DME) supply company, Adelco Medical Distributors, Inc., billed Medicare for medically unnecessary DME – primarily power wheelchairs – for beneficiaries often recruited off the street.
As part of the scheme, which ran from January 2007 through December 2011, Ekwebelem paid kickbacks to “marketers” who recruited those beneficiaries and then paid kickbacks to a handful of complicit doctors in exchange for fraudulent prescriptions for DME. Those doctors included Dr. Charles Okoye, who was sentenced to two years in federal prison after he pled guilty to conspiring with Ekwebelem to commit health care fraud, and Dr. Uche Chukwudi, who fled a month before trial and remains a fugitive.
Three of Adelco’s marketers – Romie Tucker, Cindy Santana and Maritza Hernandez – have also received sentences of up to two years in prison for their roles in the scheme. During the course of the scheme, Ekwebelem submitted more than $7 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and received nearly $3.5 million.
As prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court: “In addition to exploiting Medicare’s honor system, defendant’s scheme also took advantage of the beneficiaries’ unfamiliarity with the English language and the Medicare system, forcing them to provide their personal Medicare information and sign forms shifting liability for the power wheelchairs to them, even though the forms were neither translated nor explained to the beneficiaries.
The investigation into Ekwebelem and Adelco was conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Key Facts
- State: California
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release ↗
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