Overbilled the VA for Prescription Shoes and Lied to Win
National Contract
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Peter Wong, 61, founder and former CEO
of Sunrise Shoes and Pedorthic Service Corporation, was sentenced Tuesday by
U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez to five years in prison for health care
fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced.
According to court documents and evidence presented at
trial, between March 2008 and Feb. 2015, Wong and Anthony Lazzarino, 69, former
Chief of Podiatry for the Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Northern California Health
Care System, engaged in a scheme to defraud the VA by billing for custom work
and services that were prescribed but not supplied in shoes delivered to
veterans. In addition, they and Wong’s former employee Jai Aing Chen, who
separately pleaded guilty on Dec. 6, 2016, agreed to make materially false
statements to the VA regarding where the shoes were manufactured, in the course
of applying for a national contract worth over $11 million per year. A federal
jury found Wong and Lazzarino guilty of health care fraud and conspiracy to
commit wire fraud on May 17, 2019.
This case is the product of an investigation by the
Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, Department of
Veterans Affairs Police Service, Homeland Security Investigations, and Federal
Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee S. Bickley is prosecuting
the case.
Lazzarino is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Mendez on
Feb. 11, 2020. He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in prison and a
$250,000 fine for each health care fraud count, and five years in prison and a $250,000
fine for the wire fraud conspiracy count. The actual sentence, however, will be
determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable
statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into
account a number of variables. Mendez sentenced Chen to one year and one day in
prison on Aug. 6, 2019.
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