Folashade Adufe Horne, 51, of Laurel, Maryland, and Sikirat Adunni Brown, 58, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, were both arrested June 24 after being charged in federal court with defrauding the DC Medicaid program. Horne and Brown are the third and fourth individuals charged this week with defrauding DC Medicaid. June 23, Susan Engonwei Tingwei, a University of Maryland Law School Graduate, and Janet Akindipe, an employee at the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”), were arrested. Horne, Brown, Tingwei, and Akindipe each were charged in separate criminal complaints with healthcare fraud and healthcare false statements for falsely claiming to have provided personal care aide (“PCA”) services to DC Medicaid beneficiaries.
According to charging documents, Horne claimed to provide PCA services to beneficiaries when she was actually working at Howard University Hospital, where she has been employed since 2007. DC Medicaid claims data revealed that on 204 separate days in 2014, she purportedly provided 20 or more hours of PCA services to several Medicaid beneficiaries while working for various home health agencies, including 28 separate days where she claimed to work 32 hours. Charging documents also allege that Horne claimed to provide PCA services to DC Medicaid beneficiaries when she was traveling outside the United States. Charging documents allege that Brown purported to provide PCA services in excess of twenty hours on a given day and also to multiple beneficiaries in overlapping hours. On 335 occasions between November 2014 and October 2015, Brown claimed that she provided between 20 and 38 hours of PCA services each day. She also asserted that she provided 176 hours of services during a seven-day period even though there are only 168 hours in a week. In addition, she is alleged to have paid kickbacks to at least one beneficiary to get that person to sign fraudulent timesheets.
Charging documents indicate that Tingwei earned a Master of Laws degree from the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law in May 2017. On more than 100 occasions, she is alleged to have submitted timesheets purporting to have provided PCA services in Washington, DC, when she was scheduled to be in Baltimore attending law school classes. As part of the investigation, law enforcement agents conducted surveillance of Tingwei and also obtained cell phone records that provided her location history. Tingwei claimed to provide PCA services in Washington at times when law enforcement agents saw her in Baltimore and also when cell phone records placed her in Baltimore.
Charging documents allege that Akindipe claimed to provide PCA services to beneficiaries when she was actually working at NIH. Between working at NIH and purportedly providing PCA services, Akindipe claimed she worked more than twenty hours a day on 338 different occasions between January 2015 and October 2018. She also is alleged to have caused Medicaid to be billed for PCA services that she purportedly rendered during three separate periods of time when she was actually traveling outside the United States.
