Home Memphis Press Releases 2009 Former Psychotherapist Sentenced for Medicare and Tenncare Fraud in Services to be Provided to Nursing Home Residents...
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Former Psychotherapist Sentenced for Medicare and Tenncare Fraud in Services to be Provided to Nursing Home Residents

U.S. Attorney’s Office April 21, 2009
  • Middle District of Tennessee (615) 736-5151

NASHVILLE, TN—Ed Yarbrough, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee announced that John Emory Sawyer III, 63, formerly of Franklin, Tennessee, was sentenced yesterday to serve 18 months of imprisonment for defrauding the Medicare and TennCare government health care programs.

Sawyer was a Tennessee licensed clinical psychologist who was providing psychotherapy services to nursing home patients who were either Medicare or TennCare beneficiaries. He surrendered his license to practice in 2008. Sawyer, who also owned the company Sawyer & Associates, had employees providing therapy to nursing home patients. On different occasions from July 2005 to March 2006, federal agents conducted surveillance of Sawyer and determined that he was not providing therapy to patients for whom he billed government programs, because he was not at any of the nursing homes where he was ostensibly providing psychotherapy. He also falsely inflated the amount of time that his employees billed for having provided psychotherapy services, so the Medicare and TennCare programs would pay more money than was required. More than $77,000 in taxpayer money was paid to Sawyer for services for therapy not actually provided, in an eight (8) month period.

When sentencing Sawyer, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger recognized that health care fraud is an easy fraud to commit but a difficult one to detect because of the trust placed in health care professionals. In determining his sentence, Judge Trauger held that Sawyer abused his position of trust with the government health care programs. Sawyer was also sentenced to 3 years of supervised release to follow the 18 months of incarceration.

“We will continue to aggressively pursue those individuals who use their position as a medical professional to take advantage of patients and the taxpayers’ money,” stated U.S. Attorney, Ed Yarbrough. “In this case, we had patients in nursing homes who were in no position to identify the lack of services billed by their psychotherapist, as well as the Medicare and TennCare programs funded by precious taxpayer money. Sawyer saw an opportunity and took advantage of both. This criminal fraud and abuse of professional discretion will not be tolerated.”

This case was investigated by agents from the Nashville offices of the United States Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Rivera represented the United States.

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