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Office of the Attorney General
Western Kentucky Dentist Pleads Guilty to Medicaid Fraud
Attorney General Jack Conway and his Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control today announced a plea agreement was reached in the case of a Western Kentucky dentist. Dr. Timothy Underwood, 58, of Central City in Muhlenberg County, was indicted in December 2006 on charges that he defrauded the Kentucky Medicaid Program. Underwood pled guilty and was sentenced in Franklin Circuit Court on Friday, September 11, 2009 for presenting false claims to the Kentucky Medical Assistance Program.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Underwood will receive a 12 month sentence, that will be conditionally discharged on the condition that he pay more than $7,000 in restitution to the Kentucky Medicaid Program and $3,500 in investigative costs to the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General. The defendant has further agreed to never again be a provider in the Kentucky Medicaid Program.
"I appreciate the hard work of our Medicaid fraud investigators and prosecutors who successfully handled this case. With this plea, we were able to not only recover money for the Medicaid Program and Kentucky taxpayers but to prevent this provider from ever again defrauding the Medicaid program," said General Conway.
On March 8, 1998 and continuing through March 31, 2003, Underwood submitted duplicate bills to the Kentucky Medicaid Program giving the perception that procedures were performed by two dentists, while they were actually performed by just one dentist.
Investigators from Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control Division investigated this case after it was referred from the Cabinet of Health and Family Services. Prosecutors from the Medicaid Fraud Division also handled the prosecution of this case.
Since General Conway took office in January 2008, his Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control has recovered or been awarded approximately $80 million in federal and state recoveries for Kentucky’s Medicaid Program. Furthermore, indictments of abuse, neglect, exploitation and fraud tripled in General Conway’s first year in office.
Dr. Timothy Underwood, 58
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