Brea woman sentenced in multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scheme
A Brea woman was sentenced Thursday to a year and one day in prison for her role in a multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scheme related to false billings for unnecessary services.
Grace Hong, who was convicted in 2019 of three counts of healthcare fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit health fraud, also was ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The scheme centered on a Walnut-based therapy clinic operated by Hong and her husband, Simon Hong. Prosecutors alleged that from 2009 to 2012 the owners of the clinic billed Medicare for physical- and occupational-therapy services that were unneeded and not actually provided.
Grace Hong was accused of directing therapists to falsify medical records to make it look like the therapy services had been provided to patients.
The resulting Medicare reimbursements were funneled to companies owned by Simon Hong, according to prosecutors. Out of a little more than $6 million in false claims, the clinic received nearly $4 million in payments from Medicare.
In a sentencing brief filed with the court, Grace Hong’s attorneys described her as a “loving parent and fundamentally good and law-abiding person” who had made “poor decisions” but had “derived little benefit” from the criminal conspiracy of which she was convicted. Her marriage was abusive, the defense attorneys wrote, and she worked at the clinic at the request of her husband.
Simon Hong was convicted in two separate health care fraud cases. He was sentenced to a decade in prison for one of the cases, and received a 5 1/2 year sentence in the second, with the shorter sentence running concurrent to the longer one.
However, Simon Hong was re-sentenced earlier this week to 87 months in prison, after an appellate court found that identity theft charges he was convicted of should be thrown out, since he never attempted to pass himself off as the patients.
As part of his re-sentencing, Simon Hong was ordered to pay approximately $2.9 million in restitution.