Three residents of the Pittsburgh area pleaded guilty in federal court for their roles in defrauding the Pennsylvania Medicaid program. Arlinda Moriarty, 53, of Cranberry, Pennsylvania, her sister Daynelle Dickens, 47, of Pittsburgh, and their uncle Tony Brown, 64, also of Pittsburgh, pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and healthcare fraud. Moriarty also pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in a scheme to conceal material facts in a healthcare matter and one count of aggravated identity theft. According to admissions made in connection with the defendants’ guilty pleas, between January 2011 and April 2017, Moriarty, Dickens, and Brown were associated with four related entities controlled by Moriarty—Moriarty Consultants, Inc. (MCI), Activity Daily Living Services, Inc. (ADL), Everyday People Staffing, Inc. (EPS), and Coordination Care, Inc. (CCI). Dickens owned CCI, and Brown was an employee of MCI. MCI, ADL, and CCI were approved under the Pennsylvania Medicaid program to offer certain services to qualifying Medicaid recipients (“consumers”), including personal assistance services (PAS), service coordination, and non-medical transportation, among other services. EPS nominally performed back-office functions for MCI, ADL, and CCI.
Between January 2011 and April 2017, MCI, ADL, and CCI, collectively, received more than $87,000,000 in Medicaid payments based on claims submitted for home health services, with PAS payments accounting for more than $80,000,000 of the total amount. During that time, Moriarty admitted orchestrating a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud Medicaid for the purpose of obtaining millions of dollars in illegal Medicaid payments through the submission of fraudulent claims for services that were never provided to the consumers identified on the claims, or for which there was insufficient or fabricated documentation to support the claims.
