Home Health & Hospice Week

Two home health billers have been sentenced in the ongoing Moriarty Consultants Medicaid fraud case in Pittsburgh.

Federal and state investigators raided the Moriarty offices in 2017 and indicted 12 people, including two home health agency-owning sisters, on Medicaid fraud charges in 2018 (see Eli’s HCW, Vol. XXVI, No. 18). The case involves Moriarty and three other Medicaid HHAs, Activity Daily Living Services Inc., Coordination Care Inc., and Everyday People Staffing Inc.

Most recently, two Moriarty employees, Larita Walls and Tionne Street, pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud. Walls received five years of probation, including twelve months of home detention, and Street received three years of probation, including six months of home detention, the Department of Justice says in a release. U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon also ordered Walls and Street to pay restitution to the Pennsylvania Medicaid program in the amounts of $56,738.28 and $31,181.61, respectively.

The defendants admitted that between 2011 and 2017 they submitted fraudulent claims for services that were never provided, or for which there was insufficient or fabricated documentation to support the claims; fabricated timesheets; and for “ghost” employees — close relatives — for care that did not occur. “Some of the fabricated care occurred while Street was, in fact, working for a different employer,” the DOJ notes. And “Walls admitted that she paid kickbacks to a consumer in exchange for the consumer’s participation in the fraudulent billing scheme.”