Trial for doctor, ex-wife in $4.4m health care scheme underway
GAINESVILLE -- Prosecutors say Erik Michael Schabert, 49, and Mika Kamissa Harris, 50, submitted insurance claims for surgeries and treatments that never took place to treat falsified skin condition diagnoses.
Maria Carpenter, an bookkeeper for an insurance company in Newberry, told a jury Monday morning that she had received skin care treatment at Reliant Family Practice in January 2015 for some discoloration on her forehead and adult acne, including one chemical peel.
What wasn’t true, she said, were the notes her skin care provider wrote in her patient file, which claimed Carpenter had 95 total skin lesions, or abnormal growths, all over her body.
The federal trial for Reliant owner Dr. Erik Michael Schabert, a licensed osteopathic physician, and his then-wife and office manager Mika Kamissa Harris, a licensed cosmetologist, entered its third week Monday. The two are accused of filing $4.4 million in false insurance claims to Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medicare between January 2013 and July 2016, and falsifying patient symptoms and diagnoses in the process.
Read more: https://www.gainesville.com/news/20191021/trial-for-doctor-ex-wife-in-44m-health-care-scheme-underway