Glenview psychologist sentenced to 6 months in prison for health care fraud

A north suburban Glenview psychologist was sentenced to half a year in prison for submitting false claims to Medicare and private insurers for more than a million dollars.

U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso sentenced 67-year-old Pamela Antell to six months in federal prison and fined her $100,000 on Friday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Antell, who lives in Deerfield and has also gone by the name Pamela Gruenhut, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one federal count of health care fraud, prosecutors said.

From 2011 to 2018, Antell submitted the sham claims for mental health services she never carried out from her Glenview practice, prosecutors said. She was out of state on some of the dates she claimed to have provided treatment. She also used some of her patients’ names and birth dates to create phony claim forms without their knowledge.

In addition to her prison term and fine, Alonso also ordered Antell to pay $1,464,810 in restitution to Medicare and the insurers she’d billed, prosecutors said.

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