In an update to an August 14, 2025, story, Scharmaine Lawson Baker was sentenced to over seven years in prison and ordered to pay over $1.5 million in restitution. Read a Department of Justice press release.
Nurse practitioner Scharmaine Lawson Baker was convicted for her role in an over $12.1 million health care fraud scheme to defraud Medicare by ordering medically unnecessary cancer genetic tests for hundreds of patients she never met or examined. She falsely diagnosed patients to justify the unnecessary tests, such as diagnosing male patients with cervical cancer. She never reviewed any of the test results, including when the results showed that patients actually had variants predisposing them to certain cancers. Read a story from NOLA.com and a Department of Justice press release.