Personal Care Attendant Pleads Guilty to Making a False Statement as it Relates to a Health Care Benefit
Charlottesville, VIRGINIA – A personal care attendant, who for four years lied about the amount of hours she worked for a homebound retiree, pled guilty yesterday in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia in Charlottesville to federal false statement charges, Acting United States Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle and Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced.
Valteen Green, 36, of Charlottesville, waived her right to be Indicted and pled guilty yesterday to a one-count Information charging her with making a false statement as it related to a health care program. Specifically, she pled guilty to defrauding the Medicaid program, implemented by the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services, which allows people to hire a personal care attendant as an alternative to placement in a nursing home.
“The United States Attorney’s Office will aggressively pursue defendants who use vulnerable victims like the elderly to defraud Medicaid and other government programs,” Mountcastle said. “This defendant neglected the needs of an elderly, home-bound victim to satisfy her greed for a few thousand dollars. I commend the members of the Jefferson Area Coalition to End Elder Abuse (JACEEA) and look forward to our continuing strong partnership with that coalition to address the serious problem of elder fraud and elder abuse.”
“Billing while absent is an all too frequent form of fraud that cheats the public and endangers seniors who rely on home care,” said Attorney General Herring. “The strong relationship between my Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, our federal partners, and community partners like JACEEA is what allows us to identify and stop this sort of fraud, and hold people accountable for cheating the system and their patients.”
According to evidence presented at yesterday’s guilty plea hearing by Assistant United States Attorney Ronald M. Huber and University of Virginia Third-Year Law Student Kierstin Fowler, Green served as a personal care attendant for Victim A (a retiree who was primarily confined to his Charlottesville home) from September 2011 and May 2016. During this time, Green provided in-home personal care services to Victim A.
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During the time in which Green was employed as Victim A’s home health attendant, she was simultaneously employed at two Charlottesville business. Although she did not have fixed daily work hours at these other two jobs, Green would often work at these locations during times which she reported she was working for Victim A.
Over the course of the investigation, it was determined that between that between October 2012 and May 2016, Green submitted false time sheets claiming she was working for Victim A, when in actuality she was working elsewhere. This fraudulent billing resulted in a total loss to Medicaid in an amount exceeding $6,000.
The investigation of the case was conducted by United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General and the Office of the Virginia Attorney General – Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Assistant United States Attorney Ronald M. Huber and University of Virginia Third-Year Law Student Kierstin Fowler prosecuted the case for the United States.
