$43,000 medicaid fraud nets one-Year prison sentence
Contact: Peter Deegan
A woman who submitted more than $43,000 in fraudulent Medicaid claims was sentenced today to one year in federal prison.
Jo Ann Scott, age 49, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after a July 2, 2010, guilty plea to one count of health care fraud and one count of mail fraud.
In a plea agreement, Scott admitted that, between about October 2004 and January 2009, she submitted false claims to the federal Medicaid program for services that were not provided. Scott submitted the claims using the name and provider number of another person and had the Medicaid payments directed to locations under her control. In many instances, Scott negotiated the Medicaid checks at a Waterloo car dealership and applied a portion of the proceeds to her car payment, receiving the remainder in cash.
Scott was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade. Scott was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $200 was imposed, and she was ordered to make $43,334.40 in restitution to the State of Iowa’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. She must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Scott was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Peter Deegan and investigated by the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals’ Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 10-2013 LRR.
