A Virginia woman was sentenced to 51 months in prison for housing Medicaid recipients in her personal home and billing Medicaid for care not provided to them.
According to a July 7 news release from the Justice Department, Sharon Johnson owned Sharon Y. Johnson & Associates, which provided service facilitation and home health to Medicaid recipients. Ms. Johnson signed up several of her clients, often without their knowledge, to receive personal care services from her company.
According to the Justice Department, Ms. Johnson housed up to six Medicaid recipients at a time in her three-bedroom home, which was not licensed as a group home. Between 2014 and 2021, Ms. Johnson billed Medicaid for personal care services that were not provided to her clients. Ms. Johnson and her staff created patient portal accounts in these individuals' names and assumed the patients identities when approving routine billing requests, the Justice Department said.
Ms. Johnson was also charged with submitting fraudulent power of attorney documents for one of the residents of her home. After the resident died, she did not report the death for eight months and pocketed the residents' monthly pension payments during that time, the Justice Department said.