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Trial in health care fraud case moved to May
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Posted on Dec 05 2013
U. S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona agreed yesterday to postpone the trial of Leyda I. Ada, who is facing charges for her alleged involvement in a $1.7 million conspiracy to commit health care fraud.
Manglona granted Ada’s request to move the trial from Jan. 7, 2014, to May 12, 2014, “for good cause shown.”
Manglona said that resetting the trial from January to May is excludable under the Speedy Trial Act due to the case’s complexity and because granting the continuance serves the ends of justice, “outweighing the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial.”
The judge said that Ada faces serious and diverse charges, centering around various fraud conspiracies. Supporting these allegations, Manglona said, are over 31,000 pages of documents and one gigabyte of information.
Manglona said that Ada’s counsel is still reviewing this information and needs more time to prepare for trial.
In Ada’s motion to continue the trial, her court-appointed counsel Mark Hanson stated he is still in the process of reviewing and organizing the multitude of documents and information provided in discovery.
The prosecution did not oppose the motion to move the trial date.
The indictment charged Ada with 16 counts for allegedly conspiring with her husband in health care theft, fraud, and money laundering.
Ada’s husband, Melvin Ada, has already pleaded guilty to 56 charges and will be sentenced on March 7, 2014.
The indictment alleged that from 2006 through 2011, the Ada couple misappropriated and diverted 46 CNMI Treasury checks made payable to Midwest Medical Supply Co. Inc. totaling over $1.7 million and deposited these checks in bank accounts they controlled.
Leyda Ada used to be a sales representative for a Missouri company that supplied dialysis consumables and equipment to the Commonwealth Health Center. Melvin Ada was previously employed at CHC as a medical supply specialist.
