CONCORD – A former chief medical officer at New London Hospital was sentenced in federal court to 1 year and 1 day in prison for a scheme that billed Medicare $1.9 million for unnecessary medical devices he prescribed to patients he had never consulted with or examined.
Steven Powell, a 56-year-old former New Hampshire physician, was sentenced Oct. 13 by U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro, who recommended that Powell be incarcerated “at the lowest level of custody that can possibly be imposed” and “as close as possible to his family for visitation.” Powell must report to prison Nov. 13.
Powell, who lived in Grantham and now lives in Georgia, pleaded guilty in April 2023 in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire to health care fraud after federal prosecutors charged him with participating in a telemedicine-based fraud scheme in which he signed hundreds of medically unnecessary orders for durable medical equipment, including knee, wrist, back and shoulder braces, according to court documents.
His sentencing has been repeatedly delayed since 2023 for reasons such as attorney scheduling conflicts and Powell undergoing a medical procedure.
Powell committed the Medicare fraud after resigning as chief medical officer of New London Hospital, where he worked for 15 years, the Valley News previously reported.
Between December 2018 and March 2019, Powell signed orders for more than 500 Medicare beneficiaries, resulting in roughly 1,400 claims submitted to Medicare totaling $1,908,702 in fraudulent billing, of which Medicare paid $761,202, according to court documents.
A telemedicine company, Expansion, generated fabricated medical records and routed them to Powell through DocuSign for signature, court records show.
Powell was paid $15 per consult to sign orders falsely stating he assessed or treated the patient to determine whether the medical devices were medically necessary.
The orders were then transmitted back to Expansion, which sold them to medical device suppliers that later submitted the claims to Medicare.
The owner of Expansion, 42-year-old Steven Richardson, was sentenced in August to two years in federal prison followed by two years of supervised release in a $110 million telemedicine fraud scheme involving medically unnecessary durable medical equipment.
Powell routinely ordered multiple braces per beneficiary, including two or more for nearly every patient and four or more for at least 71 beneficiaries, according to court documents.
In December 2018, for example, he received a DocuSign packet containing 105 pages and requiring 75 signatures. According to records investigators reviewed, he completed every signature in one minute and 20 seconds, an average of 1.3 seconds per page.
That packet included orders for four braces for a 77-year-old Medicare beneficiary who was immobile during the last year of his life. The man had never met Powell but received the braces in the mail without explanation, according to court documents.
“This repeated conduct demonstrates calculated decision-making and a willingness to prioritize personal financial gain over both legal obligations and patient welfare,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kennedy wrote in the government’s sentencing memorandum on Oct. 7, recommending a sentence of 18 months in prison.
“The defendant is an educated and experienced physician who had every opportunity to comply with the law and uphold the professional obligations that accompany a medical license,” John Kennedy wrote.
The health care fraud charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Court records show the defense did not file a sentencing memorandum.
Under his April 2023 plea agreement, Powell agreed to pay $761,202.75 in restitution to the Medicare program.
The extra day, added to his Oct. 13 sentence, makes Powell eligible for good-time credits. Federal law states that a prisoner serving more than one year is eligible for up to 54 days of credit each year for good behavior.
Powell attended college and medical school in Georgia and later earned a Master of Public Health degree from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at Dartmouth College, the Valley News reported in June 2023. He completed a combined residency in psychiatry and internal medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, where he also served as chief resident in the departments of internal medicine and psychiatry.
Powell had been business partners with Adnan Khan, a former Grantham physician convicted in April 2025 of unlawfully distributing opioid medication to patients.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Office of the Inspector General led the investigation into Powell’s actions, according to a Department of Justice press release on Oct. 13.
“Dr. Steven Powell abandoned all pretense of professional ethics when he caused nearly $2 million in false Medicare bills from bogus prescriptions for medical equipment,” Ted Docks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, said in the release. “By looting these funds, this physician not only strained the system, but cheated the taxpayers who fund it.”
Powell and his attorney, Donald Kennedy of Kennedy Law Office in Manchester, could not be reached Tuesday.
