A judge in San Diego has given Jose Melendez 18 months in prison for his role in a massive power wheelchair Medicare scam.
 
Melendez pleaded guilty in January along with co-defendant Dr. Irving Schwartz of conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks.
 
Melendez was owner and operator of Oceanside Medical Services in Long Beach, Calif.; Schwartz was a doctor practicing in Imperial, a town over 200 miles away.
 
As described in their indictment, Schwartz went door-to-door to patients’ homes with co-conspirator Gloria Hernandez; Schwartz would write up power wheelchair prescriptions that were not medically necessary. Hernandez would pay Schwartz kickbacks for those fraudulent prescriptions, and sell them to Melendez for $1,000 a pop. Melendez would then sell the wheelchairs to other co-conspirators at a large markup, authorizing Medicare claims of up to $5,865 per wheelchair.
 
The total fraud haul exceeds a million dollars. In addition to his sentence, Melendez has also been ordered to pay $593,429.81back to the government. Hernandez has been sentenced to 6 months home confinement, and ordered to pay back $160,000. Two other co-conspirators in the scheme, Aristeo and Laura Tavares, have been sentenced to time served (1 day in custody), and ordered to pay back $182,860.
Schwartz still awaits sentencing – nervously, we would imagine.