A Las Vegas woman was in a California court March 7 to plead guilty to owning a fraudulent medical supply company.
Jummal Joy Ibrahim admitted before Judge George King of the U.S. District Court for Central California to participating in a scheme run by her brother to submit $3.5 million in false claims to Medicare for power wheelchairs.
Between January 2006 and September 2009, Ibrahim allowed her brother, Christopher Iruke, to use her identity to hide his ownership of Contempo Medical Supplies, a fake durable medical equipment supply company in Inglewood, Calif., according to court documents. Iruke allegedly used the company to submit false claims to Medicare for the wheelchairs and other DME, the documents say.
Ibrahim did not know anything about the business and never intended to have any role in its operation or share in its profits, according to the documents.
In Houston March 7, a federal jury convicted another DME business owner on charges that he made more than $4.3 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
Sunny Robinson was convicted on 19 counts of healthcare fraud and anti-kickback violations, according to The Associated Press.
Authorities alleged that Robinson illegally obtained Medicare beneficiary information to submit claims for reimbursement for power wheelchairs and other medical equipment from 2005 to 2009. The DME was never delivered, not needed and, in some cases, delivered to beneficiaries who were deceased.
Last week, Houston was also the setting for an indictment alleging a scheme that netted $1.6 million through false Medicare claims for DME including power wheelchairs.
The U.S. Dept. of Justice accused Houston resident Vivian Yusuf and others of defrauding Medicare from June 2007 to May 2009 via the theft of elderly individuals’ identities.
The defendants are alleged to have submitted fraudulent claims for more than $3.4 million to land the $1.6 million haul.
