Over my 10 years of monitoring the States Attorney General and how they deal with Medicaid fraud in child welfare, I must announce that I found my second superstar of child welfare false claims prosecutions and recoveries of Medicaid fraud, The Commonwealth of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Roy Cooper will always be #1 in my book.
Which Attorney General wants to be number 3? Any nominations? Any predictions?
Mental health service provider pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud
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| Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli |
RICHMOND (August 13, 2012) - Today, a Richmond-based mental health service provider plead guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud for billing Medicaid for services that were not reimbursable because the services did not address a child's specific mental health issues, were not provided by qualified mental health workers, and were not provided to children who were in actual need of the offered service. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride announced that Joseph T. Hackett, 31, of Asheville, N.C., plead guilty to one count of Conspiracy to Commit Health Care Fraud after the plea was accepted by United States District Judge Henry E. Hudson.
Hackett faces a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment when he is sentenced on November 13, 2012. He also agreed to pay $1,570,041 in restitution to the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS), the state agency charged with overseeing the Medicaid program in Virginia.
Hackett admitted that he owned and operated Access Regional Taskforce (ART), a Richmond-based Medicaid contracted provider of intensive in-home therapy services for children and adolescents, one of the many mental health services offered by Medicaid in Virginia. Intensive in-home therapy services are designed to assist youth and adolescents who are at risk of being removed from their homes, or are being returned to their homes after removal, because of significant mental health, behavioral, or emotional issues. Medicaid requires that intensive in-home therapy providers employ qualified metal health workers to provide a medically necessary service to at-risk children and adolescents.
Hackett, through ART, billed Medicaid for services that were not reimbursable because the services did not address a child's specific mental health issues, were not provided by qualified mental health workers, and were not provided to children who were in actual need of the offered service. Hackett admitted that Medicaid paid ART at least $1,570,041 that ART was not entitled to receive. In addition, Hackett paid Creed Xtreme Marketing Concepts, a.k.a. Creed Extreme Marketing, $545,410 for patient referrals. The owner of Creed, Lorie T. Monroe, was sentenced to 37 months of imprisonment for receiving these referral payments.
The case was investigated by the Virginia attorney general's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Virginia Assistant Attorney General and Special Assistant United States Attorney Joseph E.H. Atkinson and Assistant United States Attorney Jessica Aber Brumberg prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.
Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on https://pcl.uscourts.gov.
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