The general manager of a defunct ambulance company formerly based in the Fairfax District was sentenced on Feb. 9 to 87 months in federal prison for his role in a $5.5 million scheme to defraud the Medicare program.

The defendant, Wesley Harlan Kingsbury, 34, pleaded guilty on Sept. 15 to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to obstruct a Medicare audit and one count of making materially false statements to federal law enforcement officers. In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer, of the Central District of California, ordered Kingsbury to pay approximately $1.3 million in restitution.

According to admissions made in connection with his guilty plea, Kingsbury was the general manager of Alpha Ambulance Inc., located at 425 S. Fairfax Ave., which specialized in non-emergency ambulance transportation services to Medicare beneficiaries, primarily to and from dialysis treatments. Kingsbury admitted that between April 2010 and July 2012, he conspired with the owners of Alpha Ambulance Inc. — Alex Kapri and Aleksey Muratov, and training supervisor, Danielle Medina — to bill Medicare for ambulance transportation services for individuals who did not need to be transported by ambulance. Additionally, as general manager, Kingsbury instructed emergency medical technicians employed by Alpha Ambulance to conceal the true medical condition of patients they were transporting by altering paperwork and creating false justifications for the transportation services.

In early 2012, Medicare notified Alpha Ambulance Inc. that it would be subject to a Medicare audit. In response, Kingsbury admitted that he and his co-conspirators altered patient documentation to falsely justify the ambulance transportation services. Specifically, Kingsbury admitted that he and others used light tracing tables to trace over original documents and create falsified patient documentation for submission to Medicare. They then shredded the original patient documents.

Kingsbury and the co-conspirators submitted approximately $5.2 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare, and Medicare paid approximately $1.3 million on the claims.

According to admissions in connection with Kingsbury’s guilty plea, in April 2012, the defendant was approached by law enforcement officers and asked to assist with the investigation into Alpha Ambulance Inc. Kingsbury disclosed to the owners of Alpha the names of the law enforcement officers who were conducting the investigation and the questions they had asked. On May 1, 2012, Kingsbury falsely denied to the law enforcement agents that he had disclosed that information to the owners of Alpha.

Kapri, Muratov and Medina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud on Oct. 28, 2013. They were sentenced to 75 months, 108 months, and 30 months in prison, respectively.