Nurse Practitioner Sentenced to 87 Months in Prison for $12M Medicare Fraud

A Louisiana nurse practitioner was sentenced today to 87 months in prison and three years of supervised release for causing over $12 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary cancer genetic tests. She was also ordered to pay $1,508,868.25 in restitution.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Scharmaine Lawson Baker, 59, of Fulshear, Texas, a licensed nurse practitioner and Medicare provider, received tens of thousands of dollars in illegal kickbacks in exchange for ordering expensive cancer genetic tests. Lawson Baker held herself out as an expert in Medicare regulations - authoring books on medical necessity and patient-provider relationships - while actively violating those very standards.

From October 2018 to October 2019, Lawson Baker worked as an independent contractor for a company that claimed to provide telehealth services. In her role, Lawson Baker signed hundreds of orders for medically unnecessary cancer genetic tests after brief phone calls with the patients, typically lasting less than 30 seconds, and without examining the patients. In a recorded call admitted at trial, a telehealth company's phone operator told Lawson Baker that she would be "rolling in money" by signing the orders, and Lawson Baker responded with "Honey, I am not complaining." The evidence at trial also showed that Lawson Baker ordered ovarian and cervical cancer tests for male patients, demonstrating that she was acting as a rubber stamp to get paid instead of providing real medical care. Lawson Baker never reviewed the results of any of the tests she ordered, including when the results showed that patients actually had variants predisposing them to certain cancers.

In total, Lawson Baker caused over $12.1 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, and the laboratories involved in the scheme received over $1.5 million in reimbursements from Medicare for the unnecessary testing Lawson Baker ordered. In exchange for signing these orders, Lawson Baker accepted kickbacks and bribes from the telehealth company - payments she later failed to disclose in her bankruptcy petition.

After a three-day jury trial in July 2025, a federal jury found Lawson Baker guilty of six counts of health care fraud.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division; U.S. Attorney David I. Courcelle for the Eastern District of Louisiana; Special Agent in Charge Jason E. Meadows of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG); and Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Tapp of the FBI New Orleans Field Office made the announcement.

HHS-OIG and FBI investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Samantha E. Usher and Gary A. Crosby II of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas D. Moses for the Eastern District of Louisiana prosecuted the case. Trial Attorney Kelly Z. Walters of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section assisted in the prosecution.

On April 7, the Department of Justice announced the creation of the National Fraud Enforcement Division (Fraud Division). The Fraud Division is laser-focused on investigating and prosecuting those who commit fraud against the American people. The Department's work to combat fraud supports President Trump's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a whole-of-government effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.

The Department of Justice's Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, currently comprised of nine strike forces operating in federal districts across the country, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since 2007. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, are taking steps to hold providers accountable for their involvement in health care fraud schemes. More information can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/health-care-fraud-unit.