Dallas woman pleads guilty to $7 million COVID testing scam, faces prison time [Fort Worth Star-Telegram]

A Dallas woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to scamming insurers out of more than $7 million for COVID-19 testing that was never actually performed, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton. The defendant faces up to five years in prison.

Connie Jo Clampitt, 52, was indicted in December on one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, 10 counts of healthcare fraud, seven counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. She pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud before U.S. Magistrate Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez.

“As the country struggled to cope with a devastating pandemic, this defendant conspired to swindle insurance providers out of millions of dollars. 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,” Simonton said in a news release.

Clampitt admitted that she and her co-conspirators accessed private patient information — including names, dates of birth, and insurance subscriber numbers — through various clinics where one defendant, Terrance Barnard, 39, worked as a contract lab technician, according to plea papers.

They then used the patient information 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 was never performed, according to court documents. The patients had not requested COVID-19 testing and they were not aware their information was being used to submit claims, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Clampitt also admitted that the labs at which the co-conspirators claimed the testing occurred, including TC Diagnostics, ME Diagnostics and PHR Diagnostics, were shell entities that never operated as labs, authorities said. Collectively, these three entities submitted approximately $30 million in claims and were paid more than $7 million in reimbursements for 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, according to the terms of her plea agreement.

Barnard; William Paul Gray, 49; and Donn Hogg, 37, are also charged in the scheme. They are all presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

The Dallas Regional Office of the United States Department of Labor – Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Dallas Office of the Department of Labor – Office of Inspector General, the Texas Department of Insurance Fraud Unit’s Fort Worth Field Office, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Renee Hunter is prosecuting the case and Assistant U.S. Attorney Dimitri Rocha is handling the forfeiture.

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