Healthcare “Expert” Convicted of Ordering Sham Cancer Genetic Tests for Patients She Never Met
A federal jury has convicted a Louisiana nurse practitioner in a shocking $12.1 million healthcare fraud scheme that preyed on vulnerable patients and defrauded Medicare.
Scharmaine Lawson Baker, 58, of Richmond, Texas, was found guilty Thursday on six counts of healthcare fraud for her role in ordering medically unnecessary cancer genetic tests for hundreds of individuals she never even met or examined.
Lawson Baker, an enrolled Medicare provider, presented herself as an authority on Medicare regulations, even authoring publications on medical necessity and patient-provider relationships. Yet, according to court documents and trial evidence, she actively violated the very standards she claimed to uphold…