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Former nursing home owner charged

PITTSBURGH — A woman who spent more than seven years in prison for a $7 million insurance fraud and the unrelated death of a patient at her now-defunct nursing home is in trouble with the law again.

This time, the Allegheny County district attorney’s office says 70-year-old Martha Bell has swindled an 89-year-old man out of $322,000 by falsely telling him he could invest in Medicare “bed licenses” that she allegedly claimed to still control.

The West Mifflin woman’s attorney didn’t immediately comment. She faces a preliminary hearing on Dec. 1.

Bell spent more than two years in prison for the October 2001 death of an 88-year-old woman who wandered outside the Robinson Township nursing home Bell once owned.

The death investigation led to the Medicare fraud charges, which added five more years to Bell’s prison term.

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