United States v. Adebimpe, No. 14-10303 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePatrick Sogbein was convicted of running a conspiracy to defraud Medicare by providing power wheelchairs to people who did not need them. Sogbein’s wife, Adebola Adebimpe, was convicted of participating in the conspiracy by supplying many of the wheelchairs through a medical equipment company that she owned. The court affirmed the district court's application of a two-level enhancement under USSG 3B1.3 for abusing a position of trust with respect to Medicare. The court held that medical equipment suppliers can have the requisite “professional or managerial discretion” for the abuse-of-trust adjustment to apply, if they are responsible for determining the need for the equipment they provide and personally certify the validity of their claims to Medicare. In this case, the district court’s conclusion that Sogbein and Adebimpe’s abuse of their positions of trust significantly furthered the offense was not clearly erroneous.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed the district court’s application of a sentence enhancement pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3B1.3 for abuse of a position of trust, in a case in which Patrick Sogbein ran a conspiracy to defraud Medicare by providing power wheelchairs to people who did not need them, and his wife, Adebola Adebimpe, participated in the conspiracy by supplying many of the wheelchairs through a medical equipment company that she owned. UNITED STATES V. ADEBIMPE 3 The panel held that medical equipment suppliers can have the requisite “professional or managerial discretion” for the abuse-of-trust enhancement to apply, if they are responsible for determining the need for the equipment they provide and personally certify the validity of their claims to Medicare. The panel addressed the defendants’ other challenges, and those of a co-defendant, in a separate memorandum disposition. Dissenting, Judge Paez wrote that durable medical equipment suppliers do not exercise substantial professional or managerial discretion within Medicare’s reimbursement scheme because Medicare’s rules and regulations confine them to a ministerial role and leave all critical determinations of medical need to the beneficiary’s physician.
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