Sharon Romaine Ward, 52, formerly of West Chester, pleaded guilty to fraudulently billing more than $8.5 million to Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs home healthcare programs between 2015 and 2021. Ward admitted that, when she started Halo Home Healthcare in 2015, she concealed her ownership of the company because she had a prior felony conviction in 2013 for passing forged and fraudulent prescriptions for oxycodone and hydrocodone while serving as a nurse practitioner in Warren County. The conviction made her ineligible to participate in federal healthcare programs for ten years. According to court documents, Halo Home Healthcare routinely overbilled federal healthcare programs, charging them for services it did not perform. In one example cited in court documents Halo continued to bill Medicaid for home health services while the patient was hospitalized. In addition, between 2017 and 2020, Halo hired over 50 employees with significant criminal histories which ordinarily should have excluded them from providing home health services, including one individual who was charged with a quadruple murder while ostensibly working for Halo. Ward submitted at least 92,770 claims to Medicaid seeking $8,556,776.58, receiving $8,403,299.24 between 2016 and 2021. Court documents say she also failed to provide accurate information to her business tax return preparer causing false tax returns to be prepared and filed.
