United States v. Rose Essien

530 F. App'x 291
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedJune 5, 2013
Docket12-20094
StatusUnpublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 530 F. App'x 291 (United States v. Rose Essien) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Rose Essien, 530 F. App'x 291 (5th Cir. 2013).

Opinion

PER CURIAM: *

Rose Essien appeals her conviction for healthcare fraud and identity theft. Specifically, she claims first that there was insufficient evidence at trial to convict her, and second, that she should not be responsible for the entire restitution amount because the jury acquitted her on three counts of the fourteen brought against her. We affirm.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

Medicaid covers the cost of providing beneficiaries medically-necessary durable equipment, including diapers and incontinence supplies. If a company meets Medicaid’s conditions, it can apply to become an approved Medicaid provider of equipment. One required condition for becoming an approved provider is certifying that all information submitted will be true and accurate. Once a company is approved, *293 providers can directly provide patients with equipment and bill the cost to Medicaid. The Essien family 1 founded and ran a series of healthcare related companies that purported to buy and deliver medical supplies to patients in exchange for compensation from either Medicare or Medicaid. 2

1. The First Company: Logic World Medical

Benjamin Essien started a health care business in Houston, Texas called Logic World Medical (“Logic World”) around 2003. Logic World, a licensed provider of durable medical equipment (“DME”) under Medicare, supplied a variety of DME, such as lifts, wheelchairs, and beds. Presumably due to a series of crack-downs on companies fraudulently billing Medicare for power wheelchairs, Logic World shifted its focus to incontinence supplies — such as diapers — that Medicaid, but not Medicare, would cover. Another possible reason for Logic World’s changed business strategy may have been that supplying diapers provided a thirty-percent profit margin. In September 2003, Logic World became an approved Medicaid provider.

Because Medicaid covers only the cost of medically-necessary equipment, a doctor must first fill out a “Title 19” form, which serves as a prescription verifying the patient’s need for the equipment. The Title 19 form must include the equipment provider’s name and Texas Provider Identifier number, as well as the printed name of the doctor’s representative certifying that the services being supplied are consistent with the physician’s directive. Then, after the equipment is delivered to the patient, the provider (here, Logic World) bills Medicaid through either billing software or Medicaid’s own website.

Benjamin hired Andatrica Howard (“Howard”) to handle his billings. Howard secured the Title 19 forms for Logic World, and then billed Medicaid based on the information in those forms. Initially, Benjamin compensated Howard for managing Logic World’s Medicaid billing with a four percent commission. After Howard threatened to send business to Logic World’s competitors if her compensation was not increased, Benjamin increased her commission to twelve percent of Logic World’s gross income. Howard, not satisfied for long, ended her relationship with Logic World in 2005.

In 2004, before Howard stopped billing for Logic World, the Essien family decided that Benjamin’s sister, Rose, and father, Bassey, would assist with Logic World, enabling Benjamin to go to school. Bas-sey began writing checks on Logic World’s business account, and Rose became Logic World’s office administrator. By virtue of her position, Rose became intimately involved in the business operations of the company.

Rose maintained Logic World’s office, sent and received faxes, did clerical work, and “update[d] patient records based on information from the field, calls made into the office, and the like.” Rose also began calling Medicaid’s support hotline on Logic World’s behalf. From October 26, 2004 to January 2, 2006, Rose called Texas Medicaid at least forty-nine times. Eventually, she was listed as Logic World’s contact *294 person on invoices. Rose also printed delivery tickets and was “supposed to adjust [the] patient roster and take people off that shouldn’t be there or add ... the new name if somebody was found.”

Benjamin reported that Rose “had a lot to do with the billing process” at Logic World, but also stated that he was the one who sent the final information to Medicaid. After Howard stopped managing Logic World’s billing, “not only was [Rose] analyzing what’s coming from the field, but now when things came from the doctor into [the] fax machine, she would analyze it through the [Texas Medicaid] Web site for [Benjamin], update the list, do the deliveries.” Further, because they all came through Rose, “she saw the delivery tickets that showed 300 extra-large diapers time after time after time,” including multiple delivery tickets without dates.

Moreover, on Rose’s application to pharmacy school, she stated that she began billing for Logic World in March 2005. Specifically, she stated that she “bill[ed] medical services rendered by [the] company.” Despite this statement, she later told investigators that she began billing for Logic World only in September 2005.

Rose received regular payments from Logic World’s account. In July 2003, Benjamin wrote Rose a $1,000 check, the memo line of which indicated it was for office supplies. In December 2004, Benjamin paid Rose $2,000 for “payroll.” Benjamin stated he tried to pay her about $2,000 a month. In total, Rose received over $23,000 from Logic World’s accounts.

Eventually, Logic World was billing Medicaid for providing diapers to around 200 people, bringing in $20,000 in monthly profit from the billings. After receiving complaints from Medicaid beneficiaries, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission opened an investigation into Logic World. Investigator Betty Sam (“Sam”) noticed that Logic World was consistently billing Medicaid for 300 diapers per person, per month — the maximum quantity of diapers for which Medicaid will pay. According to Sam, a person using 300 diapers per month would likely “need to be in a hospital, because the urinary incontinence would really be severe.” Sam also noted that Logic World was billing Medicaid for extra-large adult diapers for a five- or six-year-old child.

Sam decided to go to the Logic World office to request their records. She arrived during posted business hours, but after finding the office closed, decided to go to Benjamin’s house. Benjamin told her that the business records would be available by the end of the day, but when Sam returned to the Logic World office, she found Rose and other employees “trying to put records together.” Although Benjamin delegated the duty to validate the records to Rose, Logic World never produced all the requested evidence. For example, none of the receipts Logic World provided from its various suppliers indicated any purchases of extra-large adult diapers.

As part of Sam’s investigation, Rose provided a voluntary statement: “I print out invoices for [Logic World,] receive faxes from doctors’ offices or patients on patient supplies. Order supplies for the company. Return phone calls. I started billing for the company in [September] 2005.... Request ...

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Bluebook (online)
530 F. App'x 291, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-rose-essien-ca5-2013.