A Long Beach man who used to own a medical equipment supply company–and pleaded guilty in August 2013 to a $2.6 million Medicare fraud scheme involving unnecessary power wheelchairs–was sentenced Monday to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution. Akinola Afolabi, the ex-owner and president of Emmanuel Medical Supply, paid “marketers” to obtain Medicare beneficiary information that he used on the false medical documents, prescriptions for the chairs and claims for benefits. Some beneficiaries did not even receive the equipment or any medical supplies that were on the bills Afolabi submitted to Medicare–to the tune of about $2.6 million.
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Akinola Afolabi Convicted in Scam Billing Medicare $2.6 mil for Unneeded Wheelchairs
Medicare paid nearly $1.5 on those claims.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.