A Long Beach man was sentenced to serve 30 months in prison yesterday and pay nearly $1.5M in restitution for his role in a Medicare scheme, according to Department of Justice officials.

Akinola Afolabi, 55, a former owner of a Long Beach medical supply company, was accused of providing unnecessary power wheelchairs to Medicare patients, resulting in $2.6M in fraudulent claims to medicare. Afolabi, who owned Emmanuel Medical Supply, provided the wheelchairs and other medical equipment to Medicare beneficiaries, and submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare for this equipment, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

Afolabi admitted in court he paid marketers to obtain Medicare beneficiary information that he used on the false claims, and also that prescriptions for the equipment and documents were fraudulent.

“Some of the beneficiaries did not even receive the wheelchairs or other medical supplies that were billed,” the Department of Justice said.

Afolabi submitted about $2,668,384 in fraudulent claims to Medicare for power wheelchairs and related services from June 2006 to September 2009. Of those claims, Medicare paid about $1,490,532.

The case was investigated by the FBI and was part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.