April 06, 2012
Owner and Employees of Metro Atlanta Mental Health Services Company Indicted for Stealing Nearly $1 Million from Medicaid
On Wednesday, April 4, a Gwinnett County Grand Jury indicted the former owner of a company known as Diversified Family Solutions and three employees for unlawfully obtaining approximately $980,000.00 in Medicaid payments through a fraudulent billing scheme. The charges against owner Wanda Francis and employees Leontyne Scott, Arion Howard, Doris Cotton, Kimberly Marchand and Karyn McCrimmon include Medicaid Fraud and violation of the Georgia Racketeer and Corrupt Organizations Act. Diversified Family Solutions, which is no longer in business, had a number of locations in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Fulton counties.
In 2006, Francis enrolled Diversified Family Solutions with the State of Georgia as a provider of Assertive Community Treatment services (ACT), a program for delivery of skilled and intensive mental health services in a community setting to persons with a particular set of mental health issues.
The indictment alleges that during a period between March of 2007 and April of 2008, the defendants carried out a fraudulent scheme of billing the Georgia Medicaid program for ACT services that were not provided, or by misrepresenting services that may have been provided but were not properly billable to Medicaid as reimbursable ACT services. The indictment further alleges that the defendants went to elaborate lengths to conceal the fraudulent scheme from the State by engaging in a pattern of creating false, backdated and forged documents that were placed in the files of consumers for whom Diversified Family Solutions had submitted Medicaid claims.
Four other defendants have previously entered plea bargains with the State, and are cooperating with the State in the prosecution of the six Defendants named in this indictment.
The case was investigated, and is being prosecuted by the Georgia Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, a Unit of the Attorney General’s office. Members of the team conducting the investigation are Healthcare Fraud Investigators Johnny Brooks and Ralph Harper, Nurse Investigator Judith Cooper, Intelligence Analyst Zwella Boyd, and Senior Assistant Attorney General Charles M. Richards. Former Assistant Attorney General Jorge I. Correa also made a large contribution to the investigation before leaving the Attorney General’s office at the end of December, 2011.