MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A South Florida woman convicted in a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme is among the 11 federal inmates around the nation on whose behalf President Donald Trump has taken clemency actions.
Trump commuted Judith Negron’s sentence Tuesday, and the now 48-year-old was back home by dawn Wednesday.
“I am so thankful, so blessed. This is still a miracle that I am trying to understand,” she told Local 10 News reporter Glenna Milberg.
Negron had been eight years into a 35-year sentence at a federal prison in central Florida.
She was convicted in 2011 on 24 counts of conspiracy, health care fraud and money laundering, among other charges.
Hector Negron said a clemency advocate put his wife’s case on the president’s radar.
“I am just finding out now how many people were involved in this,” Judith Negron said. “President Trump has given me my life back.”
Hector Negron said he initially thought the call Tuesday from the White House was actually a telemarketer.
“I decided to listen to the message around 3 o’clock and I hear that it’s the White House calling me and that they want to talk to me,” he said.
The Negron family immediately got into their car and drove to the prison to pick up Judith.
“I thank President Trump and, first of all, I thank the Lord, because he has given us an opportunity to start our life again,” Hector Negron said.
While in prison, Judith Negron had helped fellow inmates who had children, her relatives said.
“There’s a lot of good people who have been left behind and I’m going to make sure that I do whatever is possible for them to have this experience and to never lose hope,” Judith Negron said.
Federal prosecutors said Judith Negron and two co-defendants conducted a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme in South Florida. Authorities said they paid bribes and kickbacks to owners and operators of assisted living facilities and halfway houses, as well as patient brokers, in exchange for delivering ineligible patients to their mental health facility.
A federal judge ordered Negron and her co-defendants to pay $87 million in restitution. The two other co-defendants were sentenced, respectively, to 35 years and 50 years in prison in what the FBI described in a news release as “the three longest prison sentences ever imposed in a Medicare Fraud Strike Force case.”