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Since March 2007, federal investigators have uncovered more than $5 billion in Medicare fraud, but they suspect that might just be the tip of the iceberg. As the prolific bank robber Willie Sutton reportedly said of robbing banks - because that's where the money is - health care fraud has become a huge problem throughout the country. According to the U.S. De­part­ment of Justice, Geor­gia ranks 12th in investigations, seventh in the number of fraud cases and sixth in total recovered - almost $98.95 million in 2012. In the Southern District of Georgia, more than $27 million in restitution was collected last year in one of the country's largest Medicare fraud prosecutions in 2005 - The Bio-Med Plus in Savannah. In Augus­ta, optometrist Jeffrey Spon­sel­ler was sentenced Jan. 9 to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $441,000 in restitution for bilking Medicare. Federal investigations into Medicare fraud have exploded in response to the problem, said David Stewart, who recently left the U.S. attorney's office where one of his duties was health care fraud coordinator. Medicare fraud affects everyone because Medicare has become the primary health care coverage for most Amer­i­cans when they turn 65, said Ken­neth Crowder, who recently left the U.S. attorney's office and joined Stewart in private practice. When Medicare coverage started in 1966, 19.1 million were enrolled. In 2013, that number was 43.5 million, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. With the last of the baby boomer generation turning 50 this year and increased health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, Stew­art and Crowder said fraud is expected to expand. Going after health care fraud holds the promise of getting money back for the government, Stewart said, which is another reason the Jus­tice Department has set that as a top goal. The attack on those defrauding Medicare and military health care provider TriCare occurs in crimina

LANCASTER - Local law enforcement officials say identity theft is a nightmare that can ruin its victims' lives. Unfortunately for Maryanne Sicat, of Lancaster, she is living that nightmare. "For the last three years, I've been trying to clean up my credit and fix my finances and rebuild financially because I had my identity taken and used at several places," she said. Sicat has received bills from stores and utility companies for goods and services she did not purchase. Also, she was buying a television in 2013 at a big-box store and her telephone number came up under the name of a California man. "One time is OK," Sicat said. "The second store makes you wonder. But then every single store that I went to Christmas shopping, it was the same thing. So that's why I started checking into it more." She has the name of the person she thinks is using her information but has no idea how the person got her phone number. So Sicat filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the Lancaster Police Department, and she has become another identity fraud statistic. The FTC said identity fraud is the top complaint it has dealt with in the past 13 years. It received 369,132 such complaints in 2012, or 18 percent of its total complaints. Identity fraud dwarfed complaints about debt collectors, which was in second place with 199,721, according to information the FTC provided. Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said there have not been a large number of identity fraud and identity theft cases locally. However, that is little consolation to Sicat and others like her. "Everything's on credit," she said. "So you can't do anything. You can't buy anything. It's embarrassing, and it's extremely frustrating because it makes me paranoid. I don't trust anybody." What is identity fraud? Detective James Nicolia, of the Fairfield County Sheriff's Office, said identity fraud is when a person uses another's identity for financial gain o