Felix and Patricia Omorogbe, two Nigerian health care company owners residing in Indiana, United States of America, were on Thursday sentenced to 18 and 24 months in prison respectively for $6.7 million fraud.

According to a statement on the website of the US Department of Justice, Felix and Patricia have also been ordered to pay $1,592,362 and $6,643,094 respectively in restitution.

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Based on the court documents presented, the Omorogbes, who owned three home health companies in Indiana, secretly paid bribes and kickbacks to patient marketers in exchange for referrals of Medicare beneficiaries to the companies between 2009 and 2018.

During that period, Patricia, a registered nurse, maintained relationships with marketers and signed sham contracts with patient marketers on behalf of the companies. Felix, on the other hand, facilitated kickback payments to marketers by writing cheques to himself and agency employees who converted them to cash to pay marketers.

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In addition, Patricia also submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare, the US national insurance health programme, for home health services that falsely represented that she, as a registered nurse, performed assessments of patients on dates she was out of the country.