ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A former Windermere eye doctor will spend the next 10 years in prison for performing unnecessary eye surgeries on hundreds of patients.
David Ming Pon was indicted on fraud charges in 2014.
Investigators said the doctor made his patients believe that they were going blind so he could charge them for procedures they didn’t need.
“Just greedy. I can’t understand why people would do you that way,” said James Allen when Pon's trial started in 2015.
He was one of hundreds of people who were victims of the scam.
Pon was found guilty Monday in federal court in Jacksonville of Medicare fraud and was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Pon intentionally and fraudulently misdiagnosed more than 500 Medicare beneficiaries.
Pon told them they were suffering from wet macular degeneration, an incurable disease that causes blurred vision and blind spots in someone’s vision.
Officials said he made the false diagnoses to bill Medicare for unnecessary diagnostic testing and unwarranted laser treatments.
Pon was accused of injecting victims with various detector dyes that pose potential health risks, including cardiac arrest.
Allen said he learned the truth by getting a second opinion from another doctor.
“He told me right away that I didn’t have macular degeneration and told me the treatments were unnecessary,” Allen said.
Along with prison time, Pon was sentenced to six years of probation and will have to pay back close to $7 million in restitution.
Cox Media Group
