To add to the many recent reports of billing fraud (and the federal government’s renewed commitment to stamping it out), two more cases of medical billing-related corruption surfaced in the news this week. In one case, a New Port Richey, Florida woman is accused of embezzling more than $150,000 from a single pediatric office over the past three years. Since 2006, the woman in question has allegedly been depositing checks from insurance companies into her own bank account rather than the doctor’s. According to law enforcement authorities, the woman was a trusted billing professional, who “was well-respected by a number of physicians and…given great latitude [which she] used…to put money in her own account.” The woman is currently in jail on charges of scheme to defraud.
In a similar story, a woman in Kalispell, Montana was sentenced to one year in prison and six months of house arrest after being convicted of stealing from physicians for whom she was hired to oversee billing. She will also have to pay over $120,000 in restitution to the physicians she defrauded.
