Good week for Brower and his office

U.S. Attorney Greg Brower may not be in the job much longer because the Obama administration seems headed toward replacing the Republican with someone of its choice, but despite that, this has been a good week for him and his office.

Health care fraud has been a priority for the office and on Thursday, Las Vegas anesthesiologist Eugene Chen was found liable in a civil case of submitting $421,000 worth of false Medicare claims to the government between 1999 and 2006.

That same day, Tennessee truck driver Jeff Greer was slapped with a 46-month prison sentence for trying to extort Harrah's Entertainment and MGM Mirage for $250,000 each after he found personal customer information in the back of his truck.

Up in Reno, a man was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for trying to solicit sex from a minor through his cell phone.

Then on Friday, an appeals court upheld the conviction of former Clark County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, who has already served her prison sentence.

And not long ago, an appellate court overturned a lower court ruling which had gutted a health fraud case by tossing the search results as unconstitutional. The appeals court resurrected the case against the now-defunct SDI Future Health and owners Tedd Kaplan and Jack Brunk. The case alleged five unidentified Las Vegas doctors were taking kickbacks from the owners of sleep clinics to get them to prescribe unnecessary medical tests for heart patients.

I last wrote about it in April 2007 when it looked like the case was dead because prosecutors flubbed a search warrant. http://www.lvrj.com/news/6987832.html

The appeals court has taken what looked like a major loss and given the prosecution life again. Let's see if appellate judges do the same thing in the Noel Gage case. Now that would be a major victory for the U.S. attorney's office.