Doctor Sentenced in $12 Million Medicare Fraud and Device Adulteration Scheme

A California doctor was sentenced today to 93 months in prison for defrauding Medicare, re-packaging single-use catheters for re-use on patients, and submitting false declarations in a bankruptcy proceeding.

According to court documents, Donald Woo Lee, 55, of Temecula, recruited Medicare beneficiaries to his clinics, falsely diagnosed the beneficiaries, and provided the beneficiaries with medically unnecessary procedures. Lee billed these unnecessary procedures to Medicare using an inappropriate code in order to obtain a higher reimbursement, a practice known as “upcoding.” In addition, the evidence showed that Lee re-packaged used, contaminated catheters for re-use on patients. These catheters had been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for marketing as single-use only and the re-use of these devices put patients at risk of infection and other bodily injury. Lee submitted claims of approximately $12 million to Medicare for the vein ablation procedures he performed, and received $4.5 million as a result.

In October 2019, Lee was convicted after a five-day trial, when a jury found him guilty of seven counts of health care fraud and one count of adulteration of a medical device. Lee also pleaded guilty on March 2, 2020, to one count of submitting false declarations in a bankruptcy proceeding. In addition to the term of imprisonment, Lee was sentenced to serve three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $4.5 million in restitution to Medicare.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison for  the Central District of California; Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division; Assistant Director in Charge Kristi K. Johnson of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office; Special Agent in Charge Timothy DeFrancesca of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General’s (HHS-OIG) Los Angeles Regional Office; and Special Agent in Charge Lisa Malinowski of the FDA’s  Office of Criminal Investigations’ (FDA-OCI) Los Angeles Field Office, made the announcement.

The FBI, HHS-OIG, and FDA-OCI investigated the case.

Assistant Chief Alexis Gregorian and Trial Attorney Emily Culbertson of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section prosecuted the case.

The Fraud Section leads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, which maintains 15 strike forces operating in 24 districts, has charged more than 4,200 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for nearly $19 billion. In addition, the HHS Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the HHS-OIG, are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.