Three employees of home health care companies, Travis Moriarty, 37, Tiffhany Covington, 41, and Brenda Lowry Horton, 48, all of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty conspiracy to defraud the Pennsylvania Medicaid program. The companies Moriarty Consultants, Inc. (MCI), Activity Daily Living Services, Inc. (ADL), Coordination Care, Inc. (CCI), and Everyday People Staffing, Inc. (EPS). MCI, ADL, and CCI were approved under the Pennsylvania Medicaid program to offer certain services to qualifying Medicaid recipients (“consumers”), including personal assistance services (PAS) collectively, received more than $87,000,000 in Medicaid payments based on claims submitted for these services, with PAS payments accounting for more than $80,000,000 of the total amount.
The defendants admitted that co-conspirators fabricated timesheets to show in-home PAS care they provided to consumers but that, in fact, never occurred. In addition, at Arlinda Moriarty’s direction, certain co-conspirators stopped using their own names as the attendant on timesheets and instead used the names of “ghost” attendants, some of whom permitted their names to be used in exchange for a kickback of resulting fraudulent salary payments. The defendants also admitted that certain co-conspirators submitted false timesheets for PAS care they never provided during times when they were actually working at other jobs or living out of the area. In some cases, as the defendants acknowledged, Medicaid claims were submitted for PAS care that purportedly occurred while consumers were hospitalized, incarcerated, or deceased, and in other instances, co-conspirators paid kickbacks to consumers in exchange for the consumers’ agreement to participate in the submission of fraudulent timesheets in support of Medicaid claims.
The defendants also admitted that Arlinda Moriarty directed co-conspirators to bill the maximum allowable PAS and service coordination hours for consumers to maximize profits and to ensure that the state did not require MCI, ADL, and CCI to forfeit underutilized consumer hours. Many consumers had no knowledge that their personally identifiable information was being used to bill Medicaid for benefits that the consumers had not exhausted. Moreover, the Court was further advised during the plea hearings that, as part of the conspiracy, Arlinda Moriarty directed employees to fabricate documentation during the course of state audits.
The defendants each face a maximum total sentence of not more than 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both.
