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United States v. Jones

The appellants were convicted of alleged crimes relating to their alleged use of unauthorized personnel to perform physical rehabilitation on Medicare patients and then allegedly billing Medicare at an inflated rate for those treatments. Section 1035 of Title 18 of the United States Code defines the mens rea for the crime of health care false statements as "knowingly and willfully;" it is error to use a lower mens rea in the verdict form. Appellants' convictions for theft of government funds and money laundering are affirmed, but a conviction for health care false statements is reversed. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 10-60944, 12-15-2011.

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United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit Before SMITH, PRADO, and ELROD, Circuit Judges. This appeal arises out of the nearly month-long trial of Telandra Jones, Theddis Pearson, and five other defendants for Medicare fraud and related crimes stemming from the practices of their business, Statewide Physical Medicine Group. The Appellants used unauthorized personnel to perform physical rehabilitation on Medicare patients and then billed Medicare at an inflated rate for those treatments. The jury convicted Pearson of five counts of health care false statements and one count each of theft of government funds and money laundering. Jones was convicted only of theft of government funds and money laundering. Because we find that the verdict form used by the district court lowered the level of mens rea required to convict Pearson of health care false statements, we REVERSE his convictions on those counts. On all other claims raised by the Appellants, we find no reversible error and therefore AFFIRM Jones’s and Pearson’s convictions for theft of government funds and money laundering.

I. BACKGROUND

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