LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles
County physician whose referrals led to more than $1.7 million in fraudulent Medicare billing plead guilty Monday to participating in a conspiracy to defraud Medicare by writing prescriptions for unneeded durable medical equipment, such as power wheelchairs, officials said.
Charles Okoye, a 52-year-old Carson resident, plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, according to authorities.
Okoye admitted that he wrote prescriptions for medically unnecessary medical equipment for patients referred to him through Adelco Medical Distributors, Inc., a Gardena-based DME supply company.
Okoye is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 8 and faces up to 10 years in federal prison, officials said.
As part of his guilty plea, officials said Okoye has agreed that the California Medical Board can revoke his license to practice medicine.
Between November 2008 and November 2011, Adelco recruited Medicare beneficiaries and took them to see Okoye, who would issue medical equipment prescriptions – primarily for power wheelchairs – after giving the “patients” a single, cursory examination, according to Okoye’s plea agreement.
Adelco then billed Medicare for providing the medical equipment, which the beneficiaries did not want and often never used. In return for these referrals, Okoye received illegal kickbacks for every medical equipment prescription from Adelco’s owner, Adeline Ekwebelem.
Okoye’s referrals led Adelco to submit about $1.7 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, and Medicare paid Adelco more than $820,000. Okoye also fraudulently billed Medicare more than $50,000 for services he claimed to have provided to the “patients” who received unnecessary prescriptions.
Ekwebelem, 51, of Hawthorne, is also charged in the case, and she is scheduled to go on trial on September 9.
The Adleco indictment charges four other defendants, three of whom have previously pleaded guilty. One defendant is currently a fugitive.
In his plea agreement, Okoye also admitted that he engaged in a similar unlawful arrangement with another medical equipment company, Esteem Medical Supply in Inglewood.