A former nurse practitioner from Butte has been sentenced to five years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for committing health care fraud. Tristan Ashley Svejkovsky, 41, was found guilty of falsely billing an insurance company approximately $62 million for vitamin B-12 injections and received about $613,108 from these false claims. U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich announced the sentencing.
Svejkovsky pleaded guilty in August 2024 to charges of health care fraud and using a registration number issued to another person. The case was presided over by U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy, who also ordered Svejkovsky to pay restitution amounting to $613,108. Svejkovsky is allowed to self-report to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Court documents revealed that Svejkovsky's nursing license was suspended by the Montana Board of Nursing on April 1, 2022. Despite this suspension, she continued prescribing controlled substances under her own name until June 2022 when contacted by the DEA and agreed to surrender her registration voluntarily. However, she then used a friend's DEA registration number without permission to write at least 28 prescriptions for controlled substances.
Further allegations included that Svejkovsky billed Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana for vitamin B-12 injections that never occurred, resulting in theft of $613,108 from the insurer. Starting in August 2021, she increased the units billed per injection significantly—raising payments from roughly $4.88 per injection to $4,880 each—by claiming 1,000 units instead of one unit per injection.
After her license suspension took effect, Svejkovsky continued submitting fraudulent claims by backdating them before her suspension date and even submitted claims valuing $15 million per injection for new patients as late as May 2022.
The investigation was conducted by the DEA and FBI with prosecution handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.