Sikirat Adunni Brown, 60, of Upper Marlboro, Md., was sentenced to 13 months in prison for defrauding the DC Medicaid program out of more than $340,000. In addition to the prison term, she was ordered to pay $343,539 in restitution and $201,645 in a forfeiture money judgment. According to the government’s evidence, at various times between January 2014 and June 2020, Brown worked as a personal care aide for at least eight different home health agencies in the District of Columbia. The home health agencies employed her to assist DC Medicaid beneficiaries in performing activities of daily living, such as getting in and out of bed, bathing, dressing, and eating. Brown was supposed to document the care that she provided to the Medicaid beneficiaries on timesheets and then submit the timesheets to the home health agencies, which would in turn bill Medicaid for the services that she rendered.
In her guilty plea, Brown acknowledged that between 2014 and 2020, she caused the DC Medicaid Program to issue payments totaling $343,539 for services that she did not provide. As part of her scheme, she submitted false timesheets to different home health agencies claiming that she provided 20 hours or more of personal care aide services in a given day. She also claimed to provide services when she was traveling outside the DC metropolitan area. She paid kickbacks during the scheme to at least one beneficiary. She also acknowledged that she claimed to provide services to one beneficiary during the COVID-19 pandemic even though that beneficiary said she did not.
Brown is the tenth former personal care aide in the last three years to plead guilty to defrauding Medicaid in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Five of those aides were sentenced to 13 months in prison; a sixth was sentenced to serve 15 months.
