Lauryn Nelson, 40, San Pedro, California, and Marie De La Torre, 50, Corona, California, are charged with conspiring to commit healthcare fraud, and De La Torre is also charged with eight additional counts of healthcare fraud, through a scheme to defraud the Medicare Program administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The indictment alleges that the conspiracy operated from February to September 2015. The indictment alleges that Nelson and De La Torre, both licensed vocational nurses, worked for a company not named in the indictment that did genetic testing of residents in nursing homes to determine how different residents metabolized medication, which might result in changes in medication prescribed to the residents.
The indictment alleges that Nelson and De La Torre went into four nursing homes in Wisconsin, located in Milwaukee, Rhinelander, Oshkosh, and Wisconsin Rapids, to do this genetic testing and obtained medical information about residents which they used to create fraudulent wound care supply orders they submitted to Medicare for reimbursement. The indictment alleges that neither Nelson nor De La Torre had any involvement in caring for wounds of the Wisconsin nursing home residents. The indictment alleges that Nelson and De La Torre directed that fraudulently ordered wound care supplies be shipped to the California office of the company for which they worked, instead of to the Wisconsin nursing homes. The indictment charges that they caused $552,889 to be billed to Medicare for these wound care supplies, of which Medicare paid $431,579.
