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Press Release

Dentist Sentenced In Healthcare Fraud Scheme

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Pennsylvania

ERIE, Pa. - A resident of Sugar Land, Texas and former resident of Fairview, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced in federal court to 4 months imprisonment, 8 months home detention with electronic monitoring, three years of supervised release and ordered to make restitution to United Healthcare Community Plan of Pennsylvania in the amount of $288,528.89 on her conviction of false statements relating to health care matters, United States Attorney David J. Hickton announced today.

United States District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin imposed the sentence on Kristi Ayn Liebau, 40.

According to information presented to the court, during the period from January 2008 through March 2011, Dr. Liebau, a dentist, submitted false claims to health care benefit programs (insurance plans), billing for different procedures than she had performed, up-coding claims to more expensive services, billing for medically unnecessary procedures, billing for procedures on teeth that were not present, billing for procedures that were not performed, and billing for an exorbitant number of procedures that could not have been performed in the allotted surgery time.

Prior to imposing sentence, Judge McLaughlin commented that the sentence he imposed should have a deterrent effect on other dentists or doctors who would seek to use their professions to engage in fraud.

Assistant United States Attorney Marshall J. Piccinini prosecuted this case on behalf of the government.

U.S. Attorney Hickton commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution of Liebau.

Updated July 14, 2015