Three people from St. Louis County were sentenced to prison for filing more than half a million dollars’ worth of false medical claims. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri, U.S. District Judge Sarah E. Pitlyk sentenced former owner of A Mother’s Touch In-Home Health Care LLC Doriann Morgan to two years in prison, while office manager Thalisa Walton and business manager Barbara Jackson were each given a year and a day.
This past May, the three—Morgan, 59; Walton, 47; and Jackson, 59—pled guilty to a conspiracy charge related to a scheme in which they acknowledged submitting $552,659 in false reimbursement claims against Missouri’s Medicaid program for services they never provided. This occurred between approximately January 2018 and August 2021, and they used the health care company, which is now under new ownership, to do so. The remaining amount is due by March of next year.
Claims for personal care services allegedly rendered in Missouri for a non-resident woman were among the evidence against the accused, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Their plea agreements included equally telling social media posts that exposed the three of them engaging in other activities while they were allegedly rendering the services.
While Morgan was in charge of Medicaid billing and Walton was in charge of office operations, Jackson’s duties as business manager included hiring customers and assigning staff to deliver care. Allegations under the False Claims Act that they manipulated payroll records and timesheets to bill for services that were never rendered appear to have been the basis for their civil settlement. The U.S. Attorney’s Office release stated that $90,090 of the recovery will go to Michele Bickley, who brought the “qui tam” whistleblower complaint under the act.
“Fraudulent claims submitted to the Missouri Medicaid program diverts scarce resources that should be used to provide legitimate services to those in need, including children and the disabled,” said Linda T. Hanley, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), underscoring the seriousness of the offense. As evidenced by the investigation conducted by the HHS-OIG and the Missouri Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Missouri Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, and the HHS-OIG are committed to preventing fraud and maintaining the integrity of health safety net programs.
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