Pa. woman convicted in medical fraud, patient death charged anew

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A woman who spent more than seven years in prison for a $7 million insurance fraud and the unrelated death of a patient at her now-defunct nursing home is in trouble with the law again.

This time, the Allegheny County district attorney’s office says 70-year-old Martha Bell has swindled an 89-year-old man out of $322,000 by falsely telling him he could invest in Medicare “bed licenses” that she allegedly claimed to still control.

The West Mifflin woman’s attorney didn’t immediately comment. She faces a preliminary hearing Dec. 1.

Bell spent more than two years in prison for the October 2001 death of an 88-year-old woman who wandered outside the Robinson Township nursing home Bell once owned. The death investigation led to the Medicare fraud charges, which cost Bell five more years in prison.