WASHINGTON – The owner of a Baton Rouge, La.-based durable medical equipment (DME) company, a medical doctor and two patient recruiters were convicted earlier this month of being involved in a $4.7 million Medicare fraud scheme, according to a joint investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) of the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office.

After a two-week trial, Nnanta Felix Ngari, Dr. Sofjan Lamid, Henry Lamont Jones and Ernest Payne each were convicted by a federal jury in the Middle District of Louisiana of one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to pay and receive illegal healthcare kickbacks, authorities said.

Ngari owned and operated Unique Medical Solution Inc., a Baton Rouge-area DME supplier that specialized in providing power wheelchairs to Medicare beneficiaries, according to the investigation. Evidence presented at trial indicated that Ngari in 2003 started paying recruiters, including Jones and Payne, to locate and solicit Medicare beneficiaries to attend “health fairs” hosted by the pair at churches and other locations.

At these health fairs, doctors, including Lamid, prescribed the beneficiaries power wheelchairs that were medically unnecessary, the investigation revealed. The prescriptions subsequently were used by Ngari to submit false and fraudulent Medicare claims on behalf of Unique, authorities said.

The doctors, Lamid included, also were paid illegal kickbacks by Payne and Jones based on the number of power wheelchair prescriptions generated at the health fairs, according to the investigation.  Jones and Payne also were paid kickbacks by Ngari on a per-prescription basis.

Between 2003 and 2009, authorities said, Unique submitted approximately $4.7 million in Medicare claims for purported services, and Medicare paid Unique approximately $2.5 million for these claims.

A sentencing date for the four co-defendants has yet to be scheduled. The conspiracy counts carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana. Since their launch in March 2007, Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in nine locations have charged more than 1,000 defendants that collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $2.3 billion. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Senior Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the department’s Office of Inspector General, is taking steps to increase accountability among all providers and combat the practices of fraudulent providers.

Mark Spivey is a correspondent for the RACmonitor.com and ICD10monitor.com websites. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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