United States v. Wijegoonaratna, No. 17-50255 (9th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction and sentence for seven counts of health care fraud. The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction, holding that the prosecutor's statement—that the office staff completing the intake form copied defendant's history and physical—was not improper. Therefore, the district court did not err in overruling defendant's objection to the prosecutor's statement. The panel also held that the district court satisfied Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32's required factual findings on the loss calculation; sufficient evidence supported the district court's finding that defendant intended the loss amounts underlying his sentencing enhancements; and the district court did not plainly err by applying an enhancement under USSG 3C1.3 for committing a crime while on supervised release. However, the district court violated the ex-post facto clause by sentencing defendant under the 2016 Sentencing Guidelines Manual on the six counts arising from conduct that occurred before the Guidelines Manual revision. Accordingly, the court vacated the sentence in part and remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed a conviction for seven counts of health care fraud, affirmed in part and vacated in part the sentence, and remanded, in a case in which the defendant, a physician, and others affiliated with California Hospice Care fraudulently billed Medicare and Medi-Cal for hospice care given to patients who had been falsely certified as terminally ill. Affirming the conviction, the panel held that the district court did not err in overruling the defendant’s objection to the prosecutor’s statement during closing argument that office staff who completed a patient intake form copied the defendant’s assessment. The panel rejected the defendant’s contention that the district court, at sentencing, did not make Fed. R. Crim. P. 32’s required factual findings on a disputed loss calculation. The panel held that sufficient evidence supports the district court’s finding that the defendant intended the loss amounts underlying his sentencing enhancements. The panel held that the district court did not plainly err in applying an enhancement pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3147 and U.S.S.G. § 3C1.3 for committing a crime while on supervised release, where the defendant – whose counts of
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