By Lee Slaton, Vice President of Healthcare; Smart Training“HIPAA Journal” reports that the Department of Justice announced a Texas woman was sentenced by a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas to serve 30 months in federal prison for conspiring to obtain PHI from a protected computer.
Sherman, Texas resident Amanda Lowry was a member of a fraud ring that used stolen protected health information to create fraudulent physician orders. The proceeds from the sale of the data were used to purchase luxury items.
According to court documents, the defendants accessed a healthcare provider’s EHR system to steal patient data. The stolen data was repackaged as fraudulent physician orders, which were then sold to durable medical equipment providers and contractors. The proceeds from the sale of the data were used to purchase items such as off-road vehicles, jet skis, and sport utility vehicles. The defendants were paid around $1.4 million from the sale of the data.
Acting U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei said, “The defendant’s actions not only compromised victims’ sensitive information, exposing them to fraudulent schemes…[they] ultimately resulted in unnecessary costs to federal healthcare programs.”