The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has announced that a certain Vitalis Ohakwe Ojiegbe who pleaded guilty to one count of Medicaid Fraud for writing prescriptions for controlled dangerous substances without a legitimate medical purpose has been sentenced to five years imprisonment.
Ohakwe pleaded guilty to the charges in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County in June, and the sitting Judge, The Honorable Judge Carol Coderre sentenced him to five years behind bars, with three years supervised probation, and an order to pay $16,035.11 in restitution and is also to be excluded from participating in any federally funded healthcare program.
Ojiegbe is a 68-year-old physician specialising in internal medicine, and he owned and ran Sunrise Medical Clinic, a medical practice located on Greenbelt Road in Lanham, Maryland.
The investigation into his dubious acts began after a referral from the Maryland Department of Health’s Office of Controlled Substances Administration (OCSA), responsible for enforcing the Controlled Dangerous Substances Act.
From January 2013 to June 9, 2019, Ojiegbe charged his patients, many of whom were Medicaid recipients, $200.00 monthly for medical appointments, even though they could have seen a Medicaid provider for free.
In return for these cash payments, Ojiegbe prescribed controlled dangerous substances, such as oxycodone and alprazolam, without a valid medical purpose.
The Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Attorney General’s Office, along with the Drug Enforcement Administration, handled the prosecution of this case.
Attorney General Brown expressed gratitude to Assistant Attorneys General Lisa Marts and Cathy Schuster Pascale, Fraud Analyst Todd Sheffer, and Investigator Michael Glenn for their efforts in the case.
