Las Vegas sleep clinic owner sentenced for Medicare fraud

By Gregan Wingert

Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011 | 8:46 p.m.

The owner of a Las Vegas sleep clinic has been sentenced to two years and three months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a scheme to defraud Medicare of about $230,000.

Dennis Allen Falls, 59, of Las Vegas, was sentenced on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Mahan, according to Daniel Bogden, United States Attorney for the District of Nevada.

Falls pleaded guilty on Sept. 6, to two counts of health care fraud, according to Bogden’s office. Falls also faces three years of supervised release after his prison sentence.

According to Bogden’s office, Falls was the owner and operator of Nevada Pulmonary Diagnostics and Sleep Disorders, Inc. who between early 2003 and mid-2007 would submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for complicated and expensive diagnostic tests, such as sleep studies and pulmonary stress tests. These tests were not ordered by doctors and never provided to the patients.

Falls falsified medical records to make it appear as if physicians had actually ordered the more expensive tests, according to Bogden’s office. Falls earned over $226,000 in ill-gotten gains.

The Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services conducted the investigation and the case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Crane Pomerantz and Nadia Ahmed.