By EMS1 Staff
ARLINGTON, Texas — The owner of a Texas-based ambulance company was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for a health care fraud scheme he ran.
Muhammed Nasiru Usman was found guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 12 counts of health care fraud and one count of engaging in unlawful monetary transactions.
Usman, owner/operator of Royal Ambulance Service, Inc. and First Choice EMS, Inc., was also fined $1,317,179 in restitution.
Two co-defendants, Shaun Outen, 32, of Aubrey, Texas, and David McNac, 35, of Dallas, pleaded guilty to their role in the conspiracy prior to trial and are awaiting sentencing.
Royal and First Choice primarily transferred patients on a non-emergency basis to and from dialysis treatments three times per week. The government presented evidence that Usman, Outen and McNac conspired to defraud Medicare and Medicaid by submitting fraudulent claims related to the transportation of dialysis patients.
As part of the conspiracy, the defendants told Royal and First Choice employees to omit facts when documenting their transports of Royal and First Choice patients, such as whether the patients walked to the ambulance, in order to qualify the transports for reimbursement.
Many of the companies’ records revealed that patients simply rode to their appointments in a captain’s chair in the back of the ambulance rather than lying on a stretcher.
The government presented further evidence that Usman, Outen and McNac were responsible for submitting more than $3.5 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid through Royal Ambulance and First Choice EMS, resulting in payments of more than $1.3 million.