Courtney Lewis and Latania Smith-Washington are facing accusations from the US Attorney’s Office regarding their alleged involvement in a conspiracy to defraud the United States. According to investigators, the pair orchestrated a scam that resulted in Medicare disbursing nearly $4 million in reimbursements for COVID-19 tests.
The duo established their company, SWL Services LLC, in July 2021, subsequently enrolling it as a Medicare provider. In April 2022, Medicare initiated coverage for over-the-counter rapid COVID-19 tests for program enrollees. Exploiting this policy change, Lewis and Smith-Washington allegedly devised a scheme wherein they utilized a list of Medicare users to dispatch over 64,000 unsolicited COVID-19 tests from February 2023 to June 2023.
Prosecutors assert that Lewis and Smith-Washington would at times dispatch up to eight tests per individual and then engage a billing company to solicit reimbursements from Medicare. While the recipients of these unrequested tests were not directly charged for them, the accumulated costs billed to Medicare in their names amounted to millions of dollars in taxpayers’ funds, as per investigators’ findings.
As of now, no specific court date has been announced. However, Lewis and Smith-Washington have opted to waive indictment and have agreed to face charges through an information filing. This development marks a significant step in the legal proceedings, indicating the defendants’ willingness to address the allegations brought against them outside of a grand jury indictment process.