NEW YORK – The US Department of Justice said last week that a Georgia chiropractor has entered a negotiated guilty plea on accusations that she received kickbacks and bribes for helping a clinical lab to conduct unnecessary cancer tests and she defrauded Medicare through unnecessary orders for orthotic braces.
Tefylon Cameron of Powder Springs, Georgia, entered the guilty plea on June 20 in US District Court for the District of New Jersey to charges that she conspired to commit healthcare fraud and violated the Federal Anti-Kickback statute. She is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 29.
The US Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey said that Cameron and a clinical lab had formed an agreement in which she would receive payments in exchange for leads on beneficiaries who were qualified to receive reimbursement from federal healthcare benefit programs for cancer tests. The lab paid physicians to see federal program beneficiaries through telemedicine programs and provide orders for genetic test kits that were sent to those patients regardless of the medical need or the patients' desire to receive those tests.
Prosecutors also said that Cameron and her co-conspirators owned, operated, and had financial interests in four companies that used marketing call centers and telemedicine operations to obtain fraudulent orders for unneeded orthotic braces and seek reimbursement from Medicare.
The US attorney's office said the criminal actions by Cameron and her co-conspirators cost Medicare about $15 million. It said that violating the anti-kickback law is punishable by up to five years in prison and conspiring to commit healthcare fraud is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Each charge is also punishable by fines up to $250,000 or double the gross gain or loss from the crimes, whichever is greater.