Report: Former Germantown Exec Sentenced for Falsifying Records

The former leader of a defunct health care services company will have to serve time in federal prison for falsifying records and trying to evade an audit, The Gazette reports.

Jeannette N. Awasum, 49, of Germantown, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court to eight months in prison and will have to serve two years supervised probation plus 500 hours of community service, the newspaper reports.

She faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, according to the Department of Justice.

Awasum was the CEO of Tri State Home Health and Equipment Service, which had received $1.9 million from Medicare and Medicaid for treating 62 patients, though without the proper paperwork authorizing Tri State to do so, according to the Department of Justice.

Facing an audit from the Department of Health and Human Services, Awasum made her staff to fabricate the paperwork and asked a doctor to sign off on care plans for patients he never treated, according to the DOJ. 

An attorney for Awasum told The Gazette that Tri State hadn’t billed the government for services they company didn’t provide or for patients that did not exist. He said the company was guilty of keeping bad records.

Read the story at Gazette.net.