A former supervisor at a defunct health provider has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for her role in a $63 million health care scam in Florida. Wondera Eason, 51, was handed down the sentence by U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in Miami. In addition to her prison term, Eason was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $14,985,876 in restitution.
Eason was found guilty of conspiracy to commit health care fraud on April 25, 2013. She was employed as the director of medical records at Health Care Solutions Network Inc.’s (HCSN) partial hospitalization program, a type of intensive treatment for severe mental illness. Eason oversaw the alteration, fabrication, and forgery of thousands of documents that supported false and fraudulent claims submitted to Medicare and Medicaid.
The scheme, which operated from 2004 through 2011, involved HCSN’s owner, Armando Gonzalez, expanding the scam to North Carolina. Evidence at trial showed that Eason directed therapists to fabricate documents and forged the signatures of therapists and others on documents she maintained. She also interacted with Medicare and Medicaid auditors, providing them with false and fraudulent documents.
The ‘therapy’ provided by HCSN often consisted of patients watching Disney movies, playing bingo, and having barbeques. Eason directed therapists to remove any references to these activities in the medical records. She was also aware that HCSN paid illegal kickbacks to owners and operators of Miami-Dade County assisted living facilities in exchange for patient referral information to submit false and fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
The case is being investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. It was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. Fifteen defendants have been charged and have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the HCSN health care fraud scheme.
The Medicare Fraud Strike Force has charged over 1,500 defendants since its inception in March 2007. It is operating in nine cities across the country and has brought attention to the massive scale of health care fraud in the United States.
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Key Facts
- State: Florida
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes|White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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