Optometrist Christopher Card, 59, who used to work at the Total Vision clinic in Caldwell, was charged Tuesday in U.S. District Court with execution of a scheme to defraud a health care benefit program.
Clinic officials said Wednesday that Card retired from the practice in 2010, even though court records indicate Card is still licensed to practice optometry in Idaho.
The federal grand jury that indicted Card Tuesday found evidence that he defrauded Idaho Medicaid, Medicare, Blue Cross of Idaho, Regence Blue/Shield of Idaho and the Rail Road Retirement Board of more than $1 million between 1993 and 2010 by submitting “material false, fraudulent and fictitious claims for reimbursement” to those programs.
An indictment only means Card is charged with a crime. A jury trial date on the case will be set for later this year in U.S. District Court.
The grand jury also found that Card “fraudulently billed health care benefit programs, especially Medicaid and Medicare, for false diagnoses, including glaucoma, acquired color deficiency (color blindness), tension headaches, macular degeneration, treatment of eye injuries and removal of foreign objects from the eye,” according to court records.
The grand jury also determined that when Card found out in 2008 that federal investigators had talked to one of his employees about the case, Card stopped billing for glaucoma-related cases but increased billing for other ailments, including “tension headache, pain in and around the eye, optic atrophy, punctate keratitis and nonexudative macular degeneration,” according to court records.
Court records do not indicate when federal investigators began their investigation or say how Card became a suspect. The investigation appears to go back until at least 2008.
The crime of execution of a scheme to defraud a health care benefit program is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Federal prosecutors are seeking restitution in excess of $1 million from Card; court records do not indicate if any of that money has been recovered.
Patrick Orr: 377-6219
