
Montana Nurse Falsely Bills $62 Million to Insurance
Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - A former nurse practitioner from Butte was sentenced last week in Missoula Federal Court to five years in prison and forced to pay over $600,000 in restitution after attempting to defraud Blue Cross Blue Shield out of over $62 million in fraudulent claims for Vitamin B-12 injections for fictional patients.
I spoke to Montana U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich on Monday about the case against 41-year-old Tristan Ashley Svejkovsky.
Former Nurse Gets Five-Year Sentence for Insurance Fraud
“This was a former nurse practitioner out of Butte whose license was suspended in 2022,” began Laslovich. “It's kind of a messy case. She was billing Blue Cross, so in this instance, it wasn't the government as the victim, but rather Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana. She billed them $62 million for vitamin B 12 injections that she said she was administering to patients.”
Laslovich said Svejkovsky fraudulently used a nurse friend’s DEA number to obtain the prescribed injections.
She Filed Over $62 Million in Illegal Medical Insurance Claims
“Since her license was suspended, and then she told her friend that she was just on probation, she told her friend she wouldn't use her DEA number to prescribe this sort of thing, and yet was indeed using the friend's DEA number,” he said. “She saw that as an easy way to say she was administering these injections, when in fact, she wasn't, and then after her license had been suspended by Blue Cross, knew that she was back dating claims prior to her license being suspended, even though the claims were false.”
Laslovich praised his investigators for handling such a complicated case that resulted in a successful prosecution.
“We don't have a lot of bodies,” he said. “In this instance, the DEA is a close partner of ours, of course, and so really it's our analysts who are working these cases, and it takes time. This obviously occurred a few years ago, and here we are just getting to the sentence, so what I say to people, it may take us a while to get there, but we'll get there to achieve justice and hold people accountable, and that's what we did here.”
She Must Repay Over $600,000 to Blue Cross Blue Shield
Ultimately, Blue Cross Blue Shield paid only a fraction of the $62 million in claims.
“Ultimately she billed the full $62 million, however, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, paid over $600,000; not the full $62 million, that's important to note, but $600,000 still a lot of money that she wasn't entitled to, and was ordered to pay that back, and also received a five-year federal prison sentence.”
Laslovich praised both the DEA and the FBI for conducting the investigation.
He said Svejkovsky would self-report to the Montana State Prison to serve her five-year term.
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