Federal officials have sentenced a former employee of the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Memphis to 10 months in federal prison for assaulting two VA Police officers.
Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee identified the woman as Tiffany Lewis, 39. They said in a press release on Friday that Lewis caused a disturbance on VA property in November of last year and struck another individual.
“VA police attempted to detain Lewis, but she resisted arrest and struck the arresting officer. After being escorted to a police holding room on VA property, Lewis assaulted another officer by punching the officer in the face,” according to the press release.
“On August 2, 2021, Lewis pled guilty to two counts of assaulting federal officers.”
According to its website, the VA’s Veterans Health Administration is the largest integrated healthcare network in the United States, with 1,255 health care facilities serving 9 million enrolled veterans each year.
Federal officials announced in June that a Georgia man traveled to Tennessee and posed as a veteran to receive more than $20,000 in medical benefits. That man, Kristopher M. Voyles, 31, was sentenced to 27 months in prison followed by three years’ supervised release.
A recently released audit by the VA’s Office of Inspector General found the agency mismanaged the program and did not communicate with medical facility pharmacy chiefs to ensure protocols of its drug-return program were followed.
The OIG found Veterans Health Administration pharmacy chiefs “did not effectively implement the program and did not follow requirements in VA’s contract with the reverse distributor, Pharma Logistics. These issues increased the risk of drug diversion and ultimately put about $18.1 million at risk.”
After the inspector general alerted the VA about the issues, the agency was able to recoup nearly $3.2 million, but ultimately $14.6 million was lost due to its lax oversight of the drug-return program.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
