Vandergrift, Pa, woman charged with filing false claims to get $25K in Medicaid payments
A Vandergrift, Pa, woman is accused of illegally receiving more than $25,300 in Medicaid payments by submitting false time sheets to a program that pays people who provide in-home personal care for patients. An agent with the state Attorney General’s office charged Christina Jean Myers, 39, of Lowell Street with felony counts of filing a fraudulent medical assistance claim, theft by deception and identity theft.
Investigators said Myers filed the claims by using the name of a woman who previously provided care for her father, according to a criminal complaint. Officials with the state Department of Human Services, which administers the program, contacted the attorney general after learning that
payments were made for more than 2,120 hours of work during a time when the previous caregiver was incarcerated in the Armstrong County Jail and then a state prison, the complaint said.
In addition to the former caregiver being in jail when the payments were made, some of the
time sheets submitted were made while Myers’ father was in the hospital and would not have been receiving in-home personal care, according to the complaint. Investigators said Myers was able to use the previous caregiver’s information to continue filing claims because the woman asked her to submit time sheets on her behalf for the two weeks she worked before going to jail, the arrest papers said.
Investigators said Myers told them that she continued to submit bills under the other woman’s name because she was unable to attend a program orientation so she could take over as her father’s in-home caregiver. Myers was released from custody on an unsecured $5,000 bond. She faces a preliminary hearing on the charges before District Judge Cheryl Peck Yakopec on Dec. 21.
https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/vandergrift-woman-charged-with-filing-false-claims-to-get-25k-in-medicaid-payments/
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