On November 26, 2007 Texas psychologist Joe Luis Lerma was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to four years in prison without parole, having been convicted of nine counts of health care fraud. He was also ordered to pay $530,000 in restitution. According to a statement released by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Texas, Lerma was accused of billing Medicare and Medicaid for services he neither performed nor supervised and for double billing for services during a 2 ½-year period. ¹