RICHMOND, Va. – A Chester lady pleaded guilty nowadays to prices of conspiracy to dedicate wellness treatment fraud, wellbeing treatment fraud, and wire fraud, all stemming from her procedure of a Richmond metro-location overall health treatment products and services corporation.
In accordance to court documents, amongst 2014 and 2021, Sharon Johnson, 58, owned and operated “Sharon Y. Johnson & Associates” (SYJA). Johnson’s company purportedly provided Medicaid-reimbursed providers that provided both of those Company Facilitator services—supervising a Medicaid recipient’s personal care plan and provider— and private treatment services—home health care help expert services intended to let a receiver to stay at dwelling, alternatively than entering a nursing property or group home. Johnson signed up several of her Company Facilitator clients, frequently without the need of their consciousness or informed consent, to obtain individual care solutions from her enterprise. Johnson utilized her individual home in Chester—a one-tale, 3-bed room, 1,326-square foot structure—as an unlicensed team house, housing up to a 50 percent-dozen Medicaid recipients, in addition to Johnson and another SYJA staff, at any supplied time.
Amongst 2014 and 2021, Johnson fraudulently billed Medicaid for particular care expert services purportedly delivered to at the very least 14 of her individuals, knowingly publishing timesheets to Medicaid that falsely claimed that particular SYJA aides had delivered services, when, in simple fact, all those purported SYJA workforce experienced not presented home well being treatment services to the individuals in dilemma. To execute this fraud plan, Johnson and her co-conspirators developed on the web patient portal accounts in the names of her patients, and thereafter assumed people patients’ identities when “approving” and routing billing requests for SYJA property wellbeing care providers that had not, in point, been supplied.
Separately, Johnson also executed a scheme to defraud the Virginia Retirement Method (VRS) of pension payments paid out by the VRS to a person of Johnson’s unlicensed team household inhabitants. To obtain regulate more than her patient’s money affairs, Johnson submitted fraudulent paperwork to the VRS including a “Medical Energy of Attorney” kind, and, after her patient’s dying, changed the immediate deposit area of her now-deceased patient’s VRS pension payments to Johnson’s have bank account. VRS thereafter compensated at minimum 8 regular pension payments into Johnson’s lender account before belatedly confirming the patient’s demise. Johnson, knowing she was not entitled to those people VRS funds, used individuals payments for her individual purposes.
Johnson is scheduled to be sentenced on April 18, 2023. She faces a optimum penalty of 20 several years in prison. Precise sentences for federal crimes are usually fewer than the most penalties. A federal district court judge will establish any sentence following taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Suggestions and other statutory aspects.
Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Legal professional for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Stanley M. Meador, Unique Agent in Charge of the FBI Richmond Industry Business, produced the announcement right after U.S. District Judge Hannah M. Lauck recognized the plea. The Virginia Medicaid Fraud Manage Unit assisted in the investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas A. Garnett and Shea Gibbons are prosecuting the case.
A duplicate of this press release is positioned on the web-site of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Jap District of Virginia. Connected courtroom paperwork and info are situated on the web site of the District Court for the Japanese District of Virginia or on PACER by browsing for Circumstance No. 3:22-cr-16.
