A federal court has sentenced the owner and operator of a Los Angeles-area durable medical equipment company to prison on charges of fraud amounting to roughly $1 million.
Leonard Nwafor, 44, was sentenced in absentia by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California to nine years in prison. Nwafor was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release following his prison term, pay $526,243 in restitution and $25,000 in fines and forfeit more than $526,000 in stolen Medicare funds to the U.S. government.
According to federal investigators, Nwafor, through his company, Pacific City Group Inc., or Pacific City Medical Equipment, submitted $1,109,438 in fraudulent claims to Medicare. As a result of the claims, Nwafor received $526,243 in payments from Medicare.
At the trial, elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries testified that "marketers" approached them on the street, at home or in church and asked for their Medicare numbers and other personal information in exchange for free power wheelchairs. Nwafor billed Medicare for power wheelchairs on behalf of more than 170 beneficiaries, none of whom actually needed the wheelchairs, investigators said.
The power wheelchairs reportedly cost up to $7,000 each.
The trial also included testimony from Los Angeles-area physicians whose names appeared on prescriptions Nwafor used to support his claims to Medicare. One physician, a psychiatrist, testified that he doesn't prescribe power wheelchairs and had never written a prescription for one.
Since their inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in seven districts have obtained indictments of more than 500 individuals who have, collectively, falsely billed the Medicare program for more than $1.1 billion.