New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the conviction of optician Thomas Foote, 59, of Wyoming County, for defrauding New York state by submitting false Medicaid claims for optician services that he claimed were for nursing home residents, but were never provided. The conviction concludes an investigation by the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), which found that many of the residents Foote claimed to have provided these services to were actually deceased and that he never actually visited the nursing homes on the dates he submitted claims for. Foote was ultimately arrested and charged with Grand Larceny in October last year. As outlined in the charges, Foote fraudulently received approximately $74,000 in Medicaid payments between 2016 and 2019 by billing for optician services that were never provided. The OAG’s investigation revealed that many of the patients Foote claimed to have fitted eyeglasses for were actually deceased on the dates he claimed to have serviced them, and that he even continued billing for services multiple times after those dates. Additionally, nursing home visitor logs and records also revealed that Foote never visited the nursing homes on dates he claimed to have provided services to the residents.
