Ex-podiatry office manager handed 5-year fraud sentence

An Indianapolis woman has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to health care fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Leslie Smith, 62, also was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker to spend two years on supervised release after getting out of prison and pay $2,341,655.08 in restitution.

Investigators said Smith engaged in multiple fraud schemes against her employer, relatives, and the government from 2019 to 2022 while employed as an office manager for her stepson’s podiatry practice, Healthy Feet LLC.

Without the knowledge or consent of her employer, Smith submitted at least 288 fraudulent claims for reimbursement to Medicaid for oxygen-monitoring devices that were never ordered.

Smith caused Medicaid to pay $559,197.67 on those false claims and also caused a total of $1,194,942.07 in Medicaid payments to be deposited to her personal bank account, investigators said.

After being charged with health care fraud, Smith fraudulently obtained COVID-19 mortgage assistance funds for a home on Kessler Boulevard in Indianapolis, the Justice Department said. In application documents, Smith falsely represented that she was the owner of the home when, in fact, the owner was a relative of Smith’s who died in 2020, investigators said.

Smith also sold a residence in Indianapolis that she jointly owned with another individual for about $380,000 without the knowledge or consent of the co-owner. Investigators said she forged the co-owner’s signature on certain key documents, allowing her keep the entire profit from the sale.

According to prosecutors, Smith did not file federal income tax returns from 2018 through 2021, a failure to report almost $1.3 million in income. She also prepared false tax returns for her employer and included all of her payments from Medicaid as income for her employer in an effort to hide the fact that she was fraudulently receiving money from Medicaid.

Investigators for U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana worked with the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, FBI, Office of Inspector General for the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and the Indiana Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit on the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew B. Miller prosecuted this case.

“This case originated from our office’s data-mining efforts and confirms the importance of using every technology tool available to bring fraudsters to justice, even perpetrators who hide in the plain sight of a doctor’s office,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said in written remarks.