Murder Suspect's Mother Saw Victim's Foot In Bin And Discovered Her Body, Court Records Show

Image via ABC 13 Houston

BY FOTI KALLERGIS

HOUSTON (ABC NEWS)--The 24-year-old man charged with murder after a woman's body was found in a recycling bin in his bedroom faced a judge overnight.

Alex Akpan, who wore a black T-shirt with the Bible verse Psalm 82:3 written on the back, stood in court as new details came out surrounding the death of his alleged victim, 23-year-old Irene Yemitan.

Akpan had only known Yemitan for a few days. Authorities have not said what the possible relationship may be between them.

According to court documents, on Sept. 5, Akpan's mother went inside his room at their home in the 9600 block of Wellsworth Drive to see if he was there.

She stated that it wasn't normal to have the recycling container there since it's usually in the back yard. When she looked inside, she saw a foot.

She tipped the bin over and saw the body of a woman, who was later identified as Yemitan.

That's when she called her ex-husband over to the house. When he arrived, they pulled Yemitan's body out of the bin and attempted to do CPR. They called 911, but Yemitan was already dead.
Investigators noted the victim had no apparent signs of injury. Court records say she was strangled.

The prosecutor said that when Akpan got home, officers questioned him. He refused to answer them and asked for an attorney.

On Thursday, prosecutors asked for a $500,000 bond, claiming Akpan was a flight risk. They also say Akpan's family was planning to send him to Nigeria.
Akpan's bond has been set at $250,000. He has also been charged with tampering with a corpse.

Akpan is due back in court on Friday.

Meet Professor Uche Anadu Ndefo

The TSU College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences assistant professor is helping develop a Doctor of Pharmacy program in Nigeria

BY CHRISTINE HALL

Uche Anadu Ndefo, PharmD, wants Nigerian pharmacy students to spend their final year of school getting hands-on experience with patients. Image: TMC

HOUSTON (TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER)--Pharmacology wasn’t Uche Anadu Ndefo’s first passion.

She actually wanted to be a broadcast journalist, but that wasn’t the type of profession her Nigerian parents dreamed about for her. They told her she needed to choose one of the more traditional Nigerian careers: physician, nurse, pharmacist, engineer or lawyer.

“I think there are five acceptable things that we can be,” Ndefo said. “They told me, ‘Pick from that and find your happiness.’”

She became a pharmacologist, but found her true happiness as an educator, which gives her the opportunity to write and publish, “a backdoor way” of doing what she wanted to do in the first place.

Family is everything
An associate professor of pharmacy practice at Texas Southern University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Ndefo was born in Nigeria, but moved to the United States as a baby when her father started a Ph.D. program and her mother entered a master’s program.

Three years later, the family returned to Nigeria and stayed for a decade. Those were Ndefo’s formative years, the stretch of time when she became immersed in her native language and culture.

The family ultimately headed back to the U.S. when Ndefo was a teenager so her mother could earn a Ph.D. in public health.

Since health and education are part of the family’s DNA, Ndefo’s Ph.D. in pharmacy is a source of family pride.

“My dad loves it. He brags about it. He addresses letters to me as ‘Doctor,’” Ndefo said. “I’m like, ‘Really dad? You’re sending a letter to your daughter. Why the formality?’”

Family is everything to Ndefo, and her townhome at the edge of West University reflects that. Outside, visitors will find evidence of a house full of boys: a driveway basketball goal and lots of toys in the back yard. Inside, family photos of Ndefo, her husband and their three sons adorn the walls. Eclectic wall paintings depicting international cities are souvenirs from her husband’s travels.

Everywhere, there are tributes to Africa, including native head statues from Zambia, a gift from her father-in-law to her husband to commemorate his birth.

Educating pharmacists
It’s that love of family that drove Ndefo to apply for the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, awarded to academics born in Africa. Ndefo earned a spot to work with professor Godswill Onunkwo at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, on developing the curriculum for a new Doctor of Pharmacy program, which will emphasize preceptorship and rotations.

Currently, pharmacy students in Nigeria only earn bachelor’s degrees and receive little clinical training, yet they play a vital role in health care because a pharmacist may be the only health care professional a patient sees.

Ndefo’s lack of confidence in her homeland’s health care system boiled over about a week before she was to travel to Nigeria to work on the new curriculum. Her father, who was visiting family in Nigeria, fell ill with malaria. Rather than admit him to a hospital, Ndefo arranged for a doctor to come and stay with him.

“That’s part of why I know that I’m not done with whatever I need to do in Nigeria,” Ndefo said. “Just the thought of him having to go to a hospital, it scared me so much.”

Her father recovered from his illness, and that was a sign to Ndefo that she was in the right place at the right time. Her goal was to change how pharmacists are educated and how they operate in Nigeria, so she won’t be afraid the next time a loved one has to go to the hospital.

Education for Nigerian pharmacy students includes reading books and learning to follow the rules, but their only hands-on experience comes during six weeks of rotations with different types of pharmacies, including community, hospital and ambulatory. In the U.S., pharmacy students spend their final year of school gaining this sort of tactile training, Ndefo said.

Ndefo wants Nigerian pharmacy students to do six weeks of rotation in each of the three areas, and she wants to get them in front of patients. But she has encountered some push-back.

At first, Nigerian educators and medical practitioners told her that they weren’t interested in changing the program. To help make her case, Ndefo joined the Nigerian Association of Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists in the Americas and became a member of the education committee. As part of that committee, she spoke with colleagues about giving pharmacy students more tactile experiences with patients. The association supported her quest for change.

“We had witnessed first-hand how it was being done in Nigeria,” Ndefo explained. “The organization stood behind, ‘It’s time to make it a little more clinical and a lot less science-y.’”

Making a case

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program also supported the cause. One of the program’s goals is to fight the “brain drain” African countries experience when people with means leave the continent to pursue other jobs and opportunities.

Ndefo says it is unlikely that Nigerian-born pharmacists making six-figure salaries in the U.S. would choose to return to work in Nigeria, where they might make $100 a month. Most people are just not going to do that, she said.

“We kept making our case and eventually, they realized that, at the end of the day, it’s really all about getting the best care that we can to patients, especially in Nigeria, where if I don’t have the money to see a doctor, I’m just going to go to the pharmacy and buy something,” Ndefo said.

Ndefo wants to ensure that pharmacists in Nigeria know how to interact with patients, know what to look for and know when to say, ‘This is way beyond my scope, and you really do need to go see a physician.’”

The program officially launches this summer, and Ndefo has applied to be one of the teaching pharmacists. She should find out if she has been accepted in the next couple of months. Until then, she will continue to fine-tune the program.

When students graduate, she said, they will understand the practice of pharmacy and they will know how to be pharmacists.

“Our goal,” she said, “is to empower them with the tools they need.

Woman Gets 80 Years For Deadly Texas Day Care

She was soon in over her head, caring for too many kids and taking chances by leaving them alone to run errands. The young woman's actions ultimately proved fatal: Four children died and three others were injured when a fire broke out at her home day care after she had left them alone to go shopping at a nearby Target.

On Tuesday, jurors sentenced the 24-year-old woman to 80 years in prison for the death of one of the children, 16-month-old Elias Castillo. She still faces charges related to the rest of the children.

"Nobody wins in this situation," Elias' great-grandmother, Patty Sparks, said after the sentence was announced. "My heart goes out to the Tata family and those precious mothers and fathers who lost their babies."

Tata, who was only a few years removed from her teens when she started her day care, worked alone most of the time. Investigators said the February 2011 blaze happened when a pan of oil she had left cooking on the stove ignited while she was out shopping.

The same jury that decided her sentence had convicted Tata last week of one count of felony murder. The jury could have sentenced her to anywhere from five years to life in prison. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, while defense attorneys asked only that jurors not give her an excessive sentence.

She will have to serve 30 years of her sentence before she is eligible for parole. Tata also was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. Jurors deliberated her punishment for seven hours over two days. The former day care owner had no visible reaction after the sentence was announced.

Tata's attorneys contended she was a good person who loved children but made a terrible mistake. Prosecutors argued she was an irresponsible day care owner who had doomed the children when she left them alone. They said Tata had repeatedly left kids she was responsible for unsupervised and it was only a matter of time before her actions led to tragedy.

Defense attorney Mike DeGeurin said he still believes Tata should not have been tried for murder because the deaths were an accident. "The sentence is not going to fix things. It's not going to make anybody feel better later on. But the jury has spoken. That's their sentence," DeGeurin said.

Tata's family and friends, who declined to comment after the sentence was announced, had testified she had changed since her troubled teenage years, when she had pleaded guilty to arson for starting two fires at her high school on the same day.

Defense attorneys had presented expert testimony to argue that a faulty stove or refrigerator may have sparked the blaze. Prosecutor Steve Baldassano said that while he has sympathy for Tata's family, she had nobody to blame but herself.

"She was being paid to watch these children. She knew better," Baldassano said. "It's not the stove. It's not the refrigerator. It's not any parents' fault. It's nobody's fault but her own." One of the surviving children, Makayla Dickerson, stood next to Baldassano as he spoke. Makayla, whose 3-year-old brother Shomari died in the fire, showed reporters scars the fire left on her right forearm.

Tata's attorneys argued she never intended to hurt the children, who ranged in age from 16 months to 3 years old, and whom Tata had referred to as "her babies." But prosecutors did not need to show she intended to harm them, only that the deaths occurred because she put them in danger by leaving them alone. Under Texas law, a person can be convicted of felony murder if he or she committed an underlying felony and that action led to the death.

In a victim impact statement Sparks read in court after the verdict was announced, she told Tata the children were never "your babies." "They don't belong to you. They never did," she said. But Sparks said that while she holds Tata accountable for what happened, she forgives her. After reading the statement, Sparks went over to Tata's mother in the courtroom and hugged her.

Jurors declined to speak with reporters after the sentence was announced. Tata fled to Nigeria after the fire but was captured after about a month, returned to the U.S. in March 2011 and has remained jailed since. She was born in the U.S. but has Nigerian citizenship.

Tata still faces three more counts of felony murder in relation to the other children who died, and three counts of abandoning a child and two counts of reckless injury to a child in relation to the three who were hurt. Baldassano said prosecutors planned to pursue trials on the remaining felony murder charges.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Seventh Defendant [Tony Nonso Obi] Sentenced To Federal Prison In Multi-Million-Dollar Health Care Fraud Case

HOUSTON—Tony Nnonso Obi, 56, a naturalized United States citizen from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for his role in a massive health care fraud conspiracy that billed the Medicare and Medicaid programs for more than $45 million, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today. Obi entered a plea of guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of money laundering in August of this year. As part of his plea, Obi admitted to entering into an agreement with the owner of City Nursing, Umawa Imo, to receive 15 percent of the money City Nursing obtained from Medicare for services billed on individuals referred to City Nursing by Obi, or on Obi’s behalf. Imo, who is currently serving more than 27 years in federal prison for his role in the conspiracy, paid Obi $1,051,425.28.

At least three of the beneficiaries taken to City Nursing by Obi were individuals living in his assisted living facility. Obi also admitted to paying beneficiaries and recruiters and handling office matters when Imo was out of the office. The City Nursing case has to date seen the conviction of a total of nine individuals, seven of which have now been sentenced to federal prison. The investigation into City Nursing was the result of the joint efforts by special agents of the FBI and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and investigators from the Texas Attorney General’s Office-Medicare Fraud Control Unit.

Assistant United States Attorney Julie Redlinger is prosecuting the case.

Reported by: FBI

7TH SPACE INTERACTIVE

Nigeria's Kenneth Anokam Gets 12 1/2 Years In Health Care Fraud

[HOUSTON, TEXAS]—Kenneth Ibezim Anokam, 57, a naturalized United States citizen from the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been handed a 151-month federal prison term for his role in a massive health care fraud conspiracy that billed the Medicare and Medicaid programs for more than $45 million over a 2 ½ year period, United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced today.

Anokam was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 27 counts of health care fraud and four counts of structuring to avoid reporting requirements by a Houston jury on May 27, 2011, following an almost three-week trial. Anokam was an employee and person in charge at City Nursing, where the fraud occurred. The owner of City Nursing, Umawa Oke Imo and Dr. Christina Joy Clardy, under whose Medicare and Medicaid provider numbers City Nursing billed the fraudulent claims, were also convicted at trial and sentenced to 327 and 135 months, respectively.

Joann Michelle White, an employee of City Nursing who pleaded guilty in February 2010, received a 46-month sentence. Godwin Chiedo Nzeocha, who was charged with Anokam with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, was returned to Houston earlier this week from Nigeria to face the charges after federal agents were unable to arrest him in 2009. Nzeocha is presumed innocent until convicted through due process of law.

In arriving at Anokam’s sentence today, United States District Court Judge Melinda Harmon, who presided over the trial, considered Anokam’s role as a manager and supervisor at City Nursing, as well as the amount of fraud committed through the conspiracy. Judge Harmon sentenced Anokam to 120 months for the conspiracy conviction and each of the health care fraud convictions which will all be served concurrently.

He also received an additional 31 months for each of the structuring charges, to be served concurrent to each other but consecutive to the 120-month sentence—for a total sentence of 151 months in federal prison. Judge Harmon further ordered he pay restitution in the amount of $16,817,015.95 to Medicare and $2,230,530.95 to Medicaid, joint and several to the other convicted members of the conspiracy.

According to last year’s trial testimony, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries were paid cash for going to City Nursing and signing undated blank treatment forms which were subsequently completed by Anokam and other City Nursing employees to reflect physical therapy treatment that was not provided. City Nursing employees who testified on behalf of the United States described how they handed out cash, usually $100-$150, given to them by Imo and Anokam to beneficiaries and “recruiters” also known as “marketers,” for coming to the clinic. Generally, beneficiaries were paid once a month when they came to City Nursing to see the doctor; however, those beneficiaries who took Medicare Explanation of Benefit statements into the office to complain about the fraudulent billing were given extra payments, sometimes $200-$300 to “settle” matters.

Anokam was one of the managers who dealt with the complaining beneficiaries with Medicare statements.

Despite billing more than $45 million for physical therapy services, the evidence at trial established there was never a single licensed or otherwise qualified physical therapist at City Nursing. One Medicare beneficiary testified that when she asked the doctor at City Nursing for physical therapy she was told the clinic did not provide that type of service and to go to her primary care physician for a referral to another clinic. Another Medicare beneficiary described the clinic as looking like an unemployment office with people just hanging out and referred to a day when he saw an employee direct a patient to make a pot of coffee.

The investigation into City Nursing was the result of the joint efforts by Special Agents of the FBI, Internal Revenue Service—Criminal Investigations, the Department of Health and Human Services—Office of Inspector General and investigators from the Texas Attorney general’s office—Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Julie Redlinger and Mark Donnelly prosecuted the case.

Assistant United States Attorney Kristine Rollinson assisted with forfeiture and restitution.

SOURCE: 7TH SPACE INTERACTIVE