Dallas woman faces prison time for submitting fraudulent COVID tests
DALLAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) – A woman is facing up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to scamming people out of over $7 million for COVID-19 testing that was never performed.
Connie Jo Clampitt, 52, was indicted in December and pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
According to plea papers, Clampitt admitted that she and her co-conspirators (Terrance Barnard, 39, William Paul Gray, 49, and Donn Hogg, 37) accessed private patient information through various clinics where one of them worked as a contract lab technician.
That patient information was used to submit claims to insurance providers – including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, United Healthcare, Aetna, Humana, and Molina Health Care – for COVID-19 testing that never happened.
Those patients had never requested testing and were not aware that their information was used to submit the claims.
Clampitt admitted that the labs where the so-called testing occurred were shell entities that never operated as labs. The entities – TC Diagnostics, ME Diagnostics, and PHR Diagnostics – submitted approximately $30 million in claims and were paid more than $7 million in reimbursements for the fake testing.
Clampitt has agreed to a $7.29 million forfeiture money judgment and will forfeit a number of items seized during the investigation, including $2.5 million in funds from numerous bank accounts, two residences, six vehicles and six luxury watches.
"As the country struggled to cope with a devastating pandemic, this defendant conspired to swindle insurance providers out of millions of dollars," said U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton. "She exploited the healthcare system when it was at its most vulnerable, indirectly raising healthcare costs for everyday Americans. We are proud to hold her accountable for her role in this conspiracy, and look forward to proving our case against her co-conspirators in court."