Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker announced today that on Friday, February 6, 1998, a Glynn County jury convicted JoAnn Fletcher Cash on two felony charges related to fraudulent billing of the Georgia Medicaid Program. From April of 1993 until January of 1995, Cash operated a business, Hand-in-Hand Counseling Services, in Atlanta and Brunswick. In the Brunswick operation, Cash recruited families to have their children participate in tutoring and social services programs. For most of the time the business operated, there was no psychologist in the Brunswick office of Hand-in-Hand Counseling Service. Cash nevertheless assigned each child a diagnosis related to psychological problems, and billed Medicaid as though the children had received psychotherapy from a psychologist. In this way, Cash fraudulently obtained almost $150,000.00 in Medicaid payments to which she was not entitled.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant Attorneys General Nancy B. Allstrom and Elizabeth D. Redisch, with the cooperation and assistance of the Glynn County District Attorney's Office. Attorney General Baker has assigned Allstrom and Redisch, along with four other prosecutors, to the State Health Care Fraud Control Unit, a specialized Unit which investigates and prosecutes cases of Medicaid fraud on a statewide basis.