Faith Newton ran Arbor Homecare Services, a home health and nursing care agency based in Chelmsford, MA, a home health care company offering a wide range of health care services covered by Medicare. While Newton operated Arbor Homecare Services, she also engaged in a conspiracy to use Arbor to defraud MassHealth of at least $100 million. And while the U.S. taxpayer was getting robbed, and patients were being neglected Newton was making sure she and her husband received their Christmas bonuses. Happy Holidays.
Under Newton’s command, Arbor often paid kickbacks for patient referrals and created sham Plans of Care with patients family members by promising home health aide services that were either unnecessary or billing for medical visits that did not happen. Newton would then flood clinics with Plans of Care that were not medically necessary and pressure doctors to sign off for approval and payment.
Newton submitted these false claims to MassHealth for services by home health aids’ (HHA) who were not trained nor certified as required by law. Newton covered up the lack of HHA training by forging training documents and giving hires sham exams along with answer keys. All fraudulent practices that eventually were caught by the Department of Mass Health. Upon learning that Arbor was being shut off by Medicaid in 2017, Newton cut herself and her husband each a $2 million dollar check from the Arbor payroll account. Newton backdated the checks to 2016 to make them appear as Christmas bonuses.
On January 23, 2025, Newton was sentenced to twelve years in prison after being convicted of Medicaid fraud.
Kudos to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in this case.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Westford woman facing 12 years in prison for multi-million health care fraud scheme” published by Boston 25 News on January 23, 2025.
Faith Newton, 56, operated Arbor Homecare Services LLC. from January 2013 to January 2017 where Newton and other workers engaged in a conspiracy to use the homecare services to defraud MassHealth of at least $100 million. Specifically, through Arbor, Newton and the others instructed by Newton would bill for home health services that were never provided. Alongside that, Newton ordered co-conspirators to falsify notes from nursing visits that never happened.
False claims were also submitted through Arbor to MassHealth for services from home health aides who were not trained in the law requiring 75 hours. Newton would either forge training documents or provide fictitious exams to the aides with the answer keys provided to them.
