A husband and wife have been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to pilfering $2.7 million from Towson, Md.-based Sheppard Pratt Health System by billing it for IT services through a company the couple controlled, according to the Towson Patch.
Lynette Nyabiosi, 50, who formerly served as the director of the Health Information Management Department at Sheppard Pratt, and her husband, Willie Evans III, 54, secretly controlled a company called Information Management Solutions Technology, which was designed to appear as a third-party contractor performing IT services for the health system, according to the report.
As director, Ms. Nyabiosi was the highest-ranking employee in Sheppard Pratt's HIM Department. In March of 2007, on behalf of the health system, Ms. Nyabiosi entered into a contract with IMST to manage Sheppard Pratt's medical records. However, in violation of the health system's conflict of interest policy, she never informed the health system that she and her husband were affiliated with IMST. To further hide the couple's affiliation with IMST, Mr. Evans signed the contract on behalf of IMST as "James Davies," and pretended to be a regional account representative of the company. Mr. Evans continued to represent himself as "James Davies" to Sheppard Pratt staff.
From 2007 to 2014, the defendants submitted more than 180 false invoices requesting payments from Sheppard Pratt to IMST for work that was never performed, or for excessively inflated amounts for work that was performed, according to the report. Ms. Nyabiosi personally approved all of the false invoices, resulting is Sheppard Pratt mailing checks to IMST for a total of $2,742,791.
The couple was ordered by the presiding judge to forfeit and pay restitution for the full amount of money they pocketed, and two forfeit two residences and three vehicles, according to the report.