North Ridgeville doctor who defrauded Medicare gets 5 years in prison, to pay $6 million restitution

A North Ridgeville man was sentenced Monday to five years and four months in prison for fraudulently billing Medicare for $14.5 million in unnecessary medical claims. U.S. District Judge David Ruiz sentenced Dr. Timothy Sutton, 44, to a total of 64 months behind bars. Sutton pleaded guilty in April to attempt and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, false statements related to health care matters and aggravated identity theft. Sutton was ordered to pay nearly $6 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio said in a news release, and will be on supervised release for three years following prison. Medicare is a federal health benefit program that covers people 65 and older. Working for telemedicine companies Real Time Physicians, based in Nevada, and 24 Hour Virtual MD, based in Florida, for nearly two years, Sutton filled out and signed pre-completed orders for medical equipment and cancer genetic testing. Sutton falsely claimed he had examined patients in Ohio and Florida when in truth he had never examined any of them. He also signed false patient statements, issued orders for medical braces and genetic testing and billed Medicare for it. Orders for the services Sutton faked required an approved Medicare provider to sign them, and the companies paid Sutton to review and sign the orders. The fraud took place from January 2018 to October 2020 and Sutton was charged by federal authorities in September 2022. Sutton signed 5,519 claims for 3,417 different beneficiaries justifying 23,344 medical items "and often included multiple braces for the same beneficiary he never examined," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Collyer wrote in federal court documents. While Sutton wasn't the mastermind of the fraud, "he was one of the most important pieces and critical actors, without whom the fraud could not have succeeded," Collyer wrote. He even demanded payment from his co-conspirators after insurance company investigators caught on to the fraud, Collyer wrote. Defense attorney Justin Weatherly wrote in court documents that Sutton's father, also a doctor, was an abusive alcoholic. Still, Sutton managed to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, one of the top medical schools in the nation, and had the support of many family members, friends and former colleagues, Weatherly told the court. Sutton's medical license expired Jan. 1 and is listed as "inactive" in an Ohio Medical Board licensing database. In a prior run-in with the legal system in 2013, Sutton stole painkillers from the University of Michigan hospital system and overdosed in a locked bathroom at an Ann Arbor medical building before being revived with CPR. Sutton admitted injecting himself with fentanyl and stealing patient medications. A misdemeanor criminal conviction in that case was later expunged from Sutton's record, MLive.com reported. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com.