CONTI MEDICAL CONCEPTS, INC. AND COMPANY’S PRESIDENT SENTENCED TO PROBATION FOR FALSE STATEMENTS INVOLVING HEALTH INSURANCE CLAIMS
– Anthony J. Conti, President, admitted he and company altered documents
– Ordered to pay $79,279.35 in restitution

LOUISVILLE, KY - Anthony J. Conti, age 49, of Prospect, Kentucky, and Conti Medical Concepts, Inc., through its President, Anthony J. Conti, were sentenced for making false statements to health care benefit programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, U.S. Attorney David L. Huber of the Western District of Kentucky announced today. Anthony J. Conti was sentenced to one year probation by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas B. Russell, and ordered to pay restitution to Medicare and Medicaid in the amount of $79,279.35. Conti Medical Concepts, which had previously entered a guilty plea to one felony count of making a false statement to a health care benefit program was also ordered to pay restitution, jointly and severally with Anthony J. Conti, as well as a special penalty assessment of $400.

On July 18, 2007, Anthony J. Conti, former President of Conti Medical Concepts, Inc., a durable medical equipment company which operated at 3006 Eastpoint Parkway, Louisville, Kentucky, entered a plea of guilty on behalf of the corporation to knowingly and willfully using a materially false document and submitting it to a health care benefit program in support of a claim for payment.

Conti Medical Concepts offered essentially two back braces manufactured by a company in New Jersey. The first back brace was known as the "V-Loc" or "System-Loc" at Conti Medical and was a three piece brace with a rigid posterior panel and a flexible anterior panel and an interchangeable rigid anterior panel. The brace provided anterior and posterior control. The second back brace, a post-surgical brace known as the "Pro-Fitt," is a two piece brace that has a rigid posterior and anterior panel that wrapped around the patient's body (often referred to as a "body jacket"), thereby offering anterior, posterior, and lateral control. Conti Medical provided nearly all of its customers with V-Loc/System-Loc back braces, but billed Medicare and Medicaid for the more expensive Pro-Fitt post-surgical back brace.

Conti Medical submitted claims and false documentation in support of its claims to the health insurance carriers as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Specifically, Conti Medical submitted altered Certificates of Medical Necessity and prescriptions for the wrong brace.

During his plea, Conti admitted the company had fabricated a Certificate of Medical Necessity to support payment for a back brace in February 2004. The corporation agreed to forfeit approximately $100,000 as part of its Plea Agreement with the United States.

In addition, the Defendant, Anthony J. Conti, individually entered a plea of guilty to a misdemeanor charge of knowingly and willfully making or causing to be made a false statement which was used to support a claim for payment on a back brace provided by Conti Medical Concepts to a Medicare patient on or about August 12, 2003. Conti admitted that an employee of his company, based on policy and procedure established by the defendant, Anthony J. Conti, had altered a doctor’s prescription for a back brace, and that the altered prescription had been submitted to Medicare in support of the company’s claim for payment.

The guilty pleas were entered at the conclusion of the third day of a trial which began in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky on Monday, July 16, 2007.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Marisa J. Ford and Lettricea Jefferson-Webb, and it was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General; the Kentucky Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control Unit; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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