Los Angeles Woman Sentenced to Over 3 Years in $11.5 Million Sleep Study Scam
ZZZ
The former owner of a Los Angeles medical clinic was sentenced to over three years in prison for billing health care benefit programs $11.5 million for unnecessary and non-existent sleep studies. According to the Justice Department, Anna Vishnevsky—owner of Atlas Diagnostic Services—recruited patients to participate in sleep studies using cash and told them to recruit others. The patients, primarily employees from the United Parcel Service and Costco, did not have doctors that prescribed sleep study testing for them. Vishnevsky never scored or interpreted the data from the studies, nor did she send the data anywhere to be scored or interpreted.
The 52-year-old then submitted insurance claims totaling over $11.5 million, naming doctors that had never treated the patients. Vishnevsky received about $3 million from those claims, and $2,747,071 of that sum is still missing. In addition to her 37-month sentence for one count of heath care fraud, she was ordered to pay the $2,747,071 in restitution. Vishnevsky’s defendant, a 46-year-old UPS driver who helped her recruit people for the sleep studies, is currently serving a 30-month federal prison sentence.