Brooklyn Park Man Sentenced for Health Care Fraud

MINNEAPOLIS—Earlier today in federal court, a 52-year-old Brooklyn Park man was sentenced for executing a scheme to defraud Medicaid out of more than $500,000. United States District Court Judge David S. Doty sentenced Allwell Tam Inimgba to 18 months in prison on one count of health care fraud. Inimgba, was charged on September 21, 2012, and pleaded guilty on October 9, 2012.

In his plea agreement, Inimgba admitted that from January 2006 to March 2009, he executed a scheme to defraud Medicaid, a federal health benefit program, by billing it for services supposedly provided by registered nurses (RNs), when that was not the case. At the time, Inimgba was the responsible billing party for Victory Home Care Inc. (“Victory”), a home health care agency that provided, or purported to provide, RN services to Medicaid recipients.

During the time period noted above, Inimgba billed Medicaid for more than 20,000 hours of services supposedly provided to various clients by RNs, and Medicaid paid Victory more than $1,400,000 as a result of those claims. However, RNs provided far less care than noted in Victory’s claims. In fact, approximately $513,734 awarded to Victory was ultimately found to be for work not done by RNs.

This case was the result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Minnesota Department of Health, and the Minnesota Attorney General Office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David M. Genrich.

According to the Justice Department, health care fraud investigations have been growing, and the Department has formed a senior-level task force to tackle the problem nationwide. The Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, represented by the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services, will look at how to share more effectively real-time intelligence data on health care fraud patterns as well as critical information about health care services, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. In 2008, the Justice Department filed criminal charges in 502 health care fraud cases involving 797 defendants.

In Minnesota, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is also participating in a task force with the Minnesota Attorney General Office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit that focuses on home health care fraud. That task force includes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, and other federal, state, and local law enforcement partners.