Dallas Co. Woman Gets 4+ Years In Prison For Medicaid Fraud
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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A District Judge sentenced Brenda Ward to 57 months in a federal prison after she pled gulity to one count of health care fraud.
Court documents say when Ward was President and CEO of H.E.L.P.-Ing. Communities, Inc. (HCI), she obtained a Medicaid group number and used it to submit fraudulent claims to Medicaid. The 48-yaer-old woman from Cedar Hill is neither a psychotherapist nor a mental health provider, but submitted claims for individual, family, and group psychotherapy sessions that never happened.
The scheme involved Ward using the identification of more than 290 Medicaid recipients, most of whom were children.
Ward admitted that between 2009 and 2015, she had personally submitted fraudulent claims totaling more than $1,600,000; of which she was paid some $887,000. The woman has been ordered to pay back the amount she received in restitution to Medicaid.
Ward has been ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on March 8.
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