U.S. Attorney Sanford C. Coats has announced that Lance E. Faulkner, of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, was indicted by a federal grand jury for healthcare fraud in connection with sales of prosthetic limbs and components, according to a Department of Justice press release. It is alleged that from January 2006 through June 2010, Faulkner’s scheme collected more than $5.5 million from Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the indictment, Faulkner owned and operated Heartland Orthotic Prosthetic Lab, DBA Faulkner Prosthetic Designs of Oklahoma (Heartland), Shawnee, Oklahoma, a durable medical equipment (DME) provider. Faulkner allegedly submitted physician names and identification numbers to Medicare and Medicaid even though many of the physicians named had never treated Heartland patients or prescribed them with prosthetic limbs. He also allegedly billed Medicare and Medicaid for beneficiaries without prescriptions for prostheses, and allegedly submitted claims to Medicare and Medicaid for more expensive, computerized prosthetic limbs, when the beneficiaries actually received less sophisticated prostheses or none at all.
If convicted, Faulkner faces up to ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and mandatory restitution. This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
