ST. LOUIS (AP) – A suburban St. Louis foot doctor has been ordered to spend a year and a day in federal prison and pay $1.75 million for his role in submitting bogus health care claims.
Sixty-six-year-old Dr. Lawrence Iken of Chesterfield was sentenced Friday in St. Louis, where Iken and his company pleaded guilty in January to a felony count of health care fraud.
Iken must repay nearly $1 million related to false health care claims. Iken and his company also must pay the federal government more than $748,000 as part of a civil settlement.
Federal prosecutors say that as a contractor at various nursing homes, Iken admitted that on thousands of occasions he billed Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers for treating abscesses and hematomas when he actually only clipped the patients’ toenails.