A federal jury has convicted a Michigan doctor for causing the submission of over $6.3 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary orthotic braces ordered through a telemarketing scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Sophie Toya, M.D., 55, of Bloomfield Hills, signed thousands of prescriptions for orthotic braces for more than 2,500 Medicare patients during a six-month period.
Toya was not the treating physician for any of these patients and, instead, was connected with some of the patients over the telephone through a telemarketing scheme and spoke to the patients briefly before signing orthotic brace prescriptions for them.
For other patients, Toya signed prescriptions without having any contact with them.
Toya also prescribed multiple braces for undercover agents posing as five different Medicare patients after speaking to each agent for less than a minute over the telephone.
Toya’s false prescriptions were used by brace supply companies to bill Medicare more than $6.3 million. Toya was paid approximately $120,000 in exchange for signing the fraudulent prescriptions.
The jury convicted Toya of one count of health care fraud and five counts of false statements relating to health care matters.
She is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 15 and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for health care fraud and five years in prison on each of the false statements relating to health care matters counts.
The case was charged as part of Operation Rubber Stamp, a coordinated nationwide law enforcement operation that targeted medical professionals who participated in fraudulent telemedicine schemes.
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
