Man Who Operated Sleep Clinic Sentenced to 27 Months in Prison
Las Vegas, Nev. – A man who owned and operated a local sleep clinic has been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release for defrauding Medicare of about $230,000, announced Daniel G. Bogden, United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.
Dennis Allen Falls, 59, of Las Vegas, was sentenced on Tuesday, December 20, 2011, by U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan. Falls pleaded guilty on September 6, 2011, to two counts of health care fraud.
Between early 2003 and mid-2007, Falls, owner/operator of Nevada Pulmonary Diagnostics and Sleep Disorders, Inc. in Las Vegas, repeatedly submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare for complicated and expensive diagnostic tests, such as sleep studies and pulmonary stress tests, which were not provided to the patient and not ordered by a physician. To conceal the scheme, Falls falsified various medical records to make it appear as if physicians had actually ordered the more expensive tests. As a result of the scheme, Falls earned over $226,000 in ill-gotten gains.
The investigation was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Crane M. Pomerantz and Nadia J. Ahmed.
