The operators of a former Winamac ambulance service have been ordered to pay almost $1 million in restitution, in connection with a health care fraud scheme. Jacqueline Jay Podell, 46, and Michael Wilson, 53, both of Winamac, were sentenced last week in U.S. District Court, according to U.S. Attorney Thomas Kirsch.
Podell pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit health care fraud. Kirsch says she was sentenced to six months in prison and six months of home confinement. Wilson was sentenced to 18 months in prison, after pleading guilty to participating in a health care fraud scheme. They’ll also have to pay restitution to Medicare and Indiana Medicaid.
Kirsch says that between 2010 and 2014, Transport Loving Care, doing business as Alliance EMS, transported four patients to and from dialysis, even though none of them had any actual medical need for ambulance transport. That reportedly resulted in almost $2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare and tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent claims to Indiana Medicaid.
FBI Indianapolis Acting Special Agent in Charge Robert Middleton says health care fraud is not a victimless crime, and often impacts many of the most vulnerable in society who rely on those services. Meanwhile, Kirsch says that all taxpayers are victims of health care fraud schemes like this one.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, the FBI, and the Indiana Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
