The sentence was handed down in two parts, with the restitution amount announced second.
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A Mount Pleasant woman convicted of two crimes related to her role in health care fraud will be responsible — along with others involved in the operation of a string of Virginia pain management clinics — for nearly $3.39 million in restitution.
Jennifer Adams pleaded guilty to two counts of misprision of a felony and was sentenced back in July to serve three years in prison.
The judge delayed a decision about how much, if any, restitution she would be required to pay. On Oct. 2, Chief U.S. District Judge Elizabeth K. Dillion in Virginia issued her debt ruling.
Adams was indicted along with others involved in the Virginia clinics in 2023. She was accused of knowing about and concealing multiple criminal conspiracies, including the illegal distribution of controlled substances and widespread health care fraud.
The conspiracy ran between December 2014 and February 2020, according to court documents.
“While Adams was not a medical provider, she had full knowledge of and enabled the criminal conduct through her management position at the company,” the judge wrote in her order setting the restitution.
Adams was the chief operating officer for the medical clinics owned by John Gregory Barnes. He started a company, L5 Medical Holdings, which operated clinics in three small Virginia towns and in Lynchburg and Blacksburg, The Post and Courier previously reported.
The case record “overwhelmingly demonstrates that Adams was not a peripheral or unwitting participant,” the judge wrote. “Rather she played a central and indispensable role in implementing and directing the very practices that gave rise to the fraud.”
Adams had sought a probation sentence and no restitution. The prosecutors sought five years imprisonment and $4.91 million in restitution.
While Adams has debts, she has also demonstrated the ability to maintain employment and the ability to contribute to the restitution. The judge set restitution payments at $100 per month for 20 years, commencing two months after her release from incarceration, far less than the actual calculated losses.
Barnes, who started his company in 2014, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He has yet to be sentenced.
Two doctors were also caught up in the fraud investigation that began with raids on the clinics in 2019.
Dr. Duane Dixon pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute controlled substance, misprision of health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Dr. Wendell Randall also pleaded for his involvement in the fraud. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Dixon and Randall both surrendered all state medical licenses and agreed never to seek reinstatement, according to the Virginia Department of Health Professions.
Randall was reprimanded in 2019 for failing to properly supervise a nurse practitioner while working for the L5 company. He was also cited in 2017 based on a reprimand from a North Carolina medical board for his involvement with the Holistic Medical Clinic of the Carolinas.
While he was not sanctioned in Virginia in the 2017 matter, the Virginia Board of of Medicine opted to include the information in its public documents.