A former Orange County chiropractor was found guilty by a jury Tuesday of federal criminal charges accusing her of submitting $2.2 million in billings for services that were never performed and issuing false medical diagnoses and prescriptions for unknowing victims, officials said.
Susan H. Poon, 56, of Dana Point, was found guilty of five counts of health care fraud, three counts of making false statements relating to health care matters, and one count of aggravated identity theft in the first criminal jury trial to occur in the Central District of California since March 2020, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Santa Ana.
Between January 2015 and April 2018, Poon, whose office was located in Rancho Santa Margarita, worked to defraud Anthem and Aetna health insurers by submitting false reimbursement claims for chiropractic services that were not performed and for false diagnoses, according to evidence presented at trial.
Poon also submitted fake prescriptions containing fabricated medical diagnoses of people that she had never met, including children, causing a medical device manufacturer to submit false claims for reimbursement to Blue Shield of California.
The people who Poon claimed to have met with and treated were dependents, such as spouses and children, of Costco and UPS employees. She unlawfully took their personal identification information and used it in her reimbursement requests and prescriptions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Poon obtained the information of employees’ dependents by attending health fairs at various Costco locations and UPS warehouses, and soliciting such information from employees.
Through the scheme, Poon billed and caused to be billed about $2.2 million in total.
Her chiropractic license was revoked in July 2019, according to the California Department of Consumer Affairs.
Poon is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on Aug. 30, and she faces a maximum sentence of 67 years in federal prison.
The matter was investigated by Amtrak, the California Department of Insurance, U.S. Department of Labor, FBI and U.S. Office of Personnel Management