Nutritionist charged with mortgage fraud
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
May 31, 2009
The owner of a Silver Spring-based nutrition company has been charged with lying on mortgage applications to obtain nearly $600,000 in loans.
Olusola Idowu was convicted in July on Medicaid fraud charges after she overbilled the federal insurance program for more than $175,000. The 55-year-old owner of SSS Nutrition and Diabetic Care Services was sentenced to five years of probation and must pay back the money she stole.
Idowu ran her Medicaid fraud from March 2002 through March 2006, prosecutors said. During that same time span she also used cash obtained from the fraudulent loan applications to buy a house in Hagerstown, according to an indictment filed in Maryland’s federal court Thursday.
Prosecutors said in the Medicaid fraud case that Idowu was the owner and sole nutritionist for SSS Nutrition, which also has an office in Hagerstown.
But in January 2005 Idowu listed on loan documents that her son was an SSS nutritionist who had five years experience, the indictment said. She wrote that her son earned $11,120 per month and had $138,000 in a bank account. Six months later, Idowu allegedly filed a tax return claiming she earned only $19,000 a year.
Requests for comment were not immediately returned Sunday, and no attorney information for Idowu was listed in court records.
Idowu’s nutrition company specializes in “Optifast” therapy, a weight loss program designed to help overweight diabetics shed pounds, its Web site said.
In her four-year Medicaid scam, Idowu listed herself as a doctor on insurance claims so she could get more cash for patients’ visits, prosecutors said. She told insurers, who then filed some of the claims with Medicaid, that she spent 80 minutes with each patient.
Idowu, prosecutors said, has never been a doctor and she generally spent less than 30 minutes with each patient. The difference in what she claimed and reality allowed Idowu to bill insurance companies up to $186 for each visit, when she should have been asking for $15.
