To lie about patient care is one thing, but to empower the patient to help with the lie is a whole different level of fraud. On February 2, 2023, Marianna Levin was sentenced to 54 months in prison for defrauding Medicaid funds which resulted in the loss of more than $100 million. The key to this scheme was paying the patients for services never done. The fraudster’s specialty – charging the government for no work performed! Medicaid should have its own billing code for it.
The scheme Levin orchestrated began in 2015, when Levin served as a senior executive at her home health company located in Brooklyn. She later went on to open a second Brooklyn based home health company. Double the companies, double the fraud. The two agencies employed about 3,000 home health and personal care aides and it appeared that the two companies offered services in all five of New York City’s boroughs and Nassau County. But numbers don’t matter since they didn’t do the work anyway.
For five years, Medicaid reimbursed Levin’s agencies hundreds of millions of dollars for home health and personal care services. A significant portion of the Agencies’ billings were fraudulent. In particular, Levin billed Medicaid for “no-show” cases in which aides claimed to be performing home health or personal care services when they were not. At times when aides falsely claimed to be performing home health or personal care services, they, in fact, stayed home, ran personal errands, vacationed, and socialized with family and friends.
Levin would split the fraudulently obtained wages were often split between the aides, who were no show, and the patients, who were also no show! In addition to paying kickbacks to no-show patients, Levin also paid kickbacks to conspirators who referred potential patients interested participating in the scheme that defrauded the Medicaid department who didn’t show up either.
Great job by the FBI with this investigation.
Today’s Fraud Of The Day is based on article “Home Health Leader Gets 54 Months In Jail For Over $100M In Health Care Fraud” published by Home Health Care News on February 2, 2023
The owner of a Brooklyn-based home health agency is being sentenced to prison for four and a half years for her role in defrauding Medicaid funds, which resulted in the loss of more than $100 million.
According to Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Marianna Levin engaged in a widespread fraud scheme where she and co-conspirators collected Medicaid funding for home health and personal care services that were never rendered.
