Donald Woo Lee, MD, was sentenced to 93 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $4.5 million for his role in a Medicare fraud scheme, the U.S. Justice Department said April 28.
Five details:
1. Dr. Lee was convicted in 2019 of recruiting Medicare beneficiaries to his clinics and falsely diagnosing them to perform unnecessary procedures. He then upcoded the claims to receive higher reimbursement for the unnecessary procedures.
2. Evidence presented at Dr. Lee's trial also showed he repackaged used catheters to reuse on patients. The catheters were FDA-approved for single-use only, and Dr. Lee repackaging them puts patients at risk for infection and bodily injury.
3. Dr. Lee was convicted of submitting $12 million in claims to Medicare for the unnecessary vein ablation procedures he performed and was paid $4.5 million for.
4. In 2020, Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to one count of bankruptcy fraud in 2020 for submitting false declarations during the proceedings.
5. He was ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution to Medicare and sentenced to three years of supervised release after serving his time in prison.