As an update to the guilty plea made by Jennifer Sheridan, 42-years-old resident of Austintown, Ohio, on October 7, 2020, she was proclaimed guilty to the crime of conspiring in a health care fraud last Tuesday, June 16, 2020. United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Justin E. Herdman announced her charges to two years and three months of incarceration, and she also needs to pay the $15,957,148 restitution fee.
Jennifer Sheridan was part of the group of six people who billed Medicaid with 48 million dollars for alcohol and drug recovery treatment. The services for which the health care program was billed were medically unnecessary, with issues that are inclined to reject reimbursement or do not have appropriate documentation. All of her co-defendants were sentenced already, and Jennifer Sheridan is the final fraud member to be charged for violations connected to the healthcare fraud scheme.
The announcement from the federal judge evoked opinions from the various law enforcement personnel involved in the investigation of the case.
United States Attorney Justin Herdman said that J. Sheridan’s conviction in the case ends the case of 6-team conspiracy fraud that took advantage of the prevalent drug abuse to get tens of millions of dollars from the taxpayers. The scheme was executed through excessive billings and more fraudulent practices.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Eric Smith is positive that justice reigned when the last fraud member was charged for the dishonest and fraudulent criminal act. The group stole from the healthcare system established to help the underprivileged and not to use as a source of profit to get millions of dollars from the government funds to line their pockets.
For Drug Enforcement Administration DEA Special Agent in Charge Keith Martin, the sentence signifies the strong commitment to pursue all medical professionals who decided to swindle the government and become an instrument to the grave abuse of prescription drugs.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost believes that J. Sheridan’s sentence is the concluding part of the wicked plot against the substance abuse victims who wanted to reclaim their lives. Atty. Yost is happy to work with the reliable federal partners to punish the violators.
Jennifer Sheridan’s ex-husband was convicted earlier in the case. Ryan P. Sheridan, 39-years-old from Leetonia, was charged on January 22, 2020, to seven years and six months of jail time and was told to settle $24,479,939 as restitution after he made a guilty plea to multiple health care fraud schemes. Ryan Sheridan is the proprietor and manager of the Braking Point Recovery Center that has offices in Columbus and Youngstown areas.
The other scheme members were not off the hook as all of them were facing charges for the crime they participated in. Kortney L. Gherardi was charged with one year and six months in federal jail and required to settle $2,413,838.42 as restitution for being guilty in the conspiracy scheme against health care fraud.
Dr. Arthur Smith and Dr. Thomas Bailey, the other linked to the crime, was convicted to two years of probation, six months of working in the community, and a fine of five thousand dollars. Another accused is Lisa Partee, who is charged with one year of the probation period and two months of working in the community and required to pay $2,200 for a special assessment fee.
Legal documents filed in the court established that Ryan Sheridan solely owns the Braking Point Recovery Center. The alcohol and drug rehabilitation center also had branches in Whitehall and Austintown, Ohio, that administered residential living rehabilitation, detox, day treatment, and intensive outpatient treatment.
Ryan Sheridan and his co-conspirators send excessive claims to Medicaid for alcohol and drug treatments. These services occurred to be one of the following: has no proper documentation; manipulated to cost a service more expensive than was actually provided; invoices for patients whose medical records did not show assessment by a doctor; has no proper diagnostic forms with valid findings; invoices associated to the supply of Suboxone, though the treating medical professional did not have the eligibility to do so; correlated to services performed at unlicensed inpatient rooms; billings grounded on target numbers provided to the medical aids by the violators to invoice more than 4 hours of treatment every day, even if the treatments were not necessary; charging for inpatient detox and drug procedure services that were actually given to an outpatient situation; and claims for case administration facilities when the truth is, clients were perfectly fine and working out at gym owned by Sheridan. These fraudulent overbilling were submitted to Medicaid from January 2015 to October 18, 2017.
Braking Point Recovery Center sent more than 134,744 excessive claims to Medicaid that amounted to over 48.5 million dollars in treatments and procedures that were supposedly given sometime from May 2015 and October 2017. The claims made the federal health program give over 31 million dollars to the rehabilitation center owned by Sheridan. Good thing that Medicaid blocked the payments to Sheridan’s drug rehab center on October 18, 2017.
The six convicts created a system of the standard procedure of dispensing the equal amount of Suboxone to each patient who wanted to reclaim their lives from drug addiction right after going into Braking Point Recovery Center’s detox treatment. The procedure was administered despite lacking the approval of a legitimate doctor to certify that the patient needs to take Suboxone. Upon Sheridan’s directives, the medical professional took someone’s Drug Enforcement Administration information to give over 3,000 doses of Suboxone in 2017.
Assistant United States Attorneys Jason M. Katz and Mark S. Bennett, together with Special Assistant United States Attorney Jonathan Metzler, prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States federal government. The conviction of the sixth and last free member of Ryan Sheridan’s fraud crew is the outcome of an investigation completed by the Ohio Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Control Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services — Office of the Inspector General, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The accomplished charges sentenced to all six members of the drug recovery center is a testimony of the rigorous process of the federal government that cuts through any fraudulent scheme orchestrated by crooked individuals. In case you or your loved one got caught in an investigation, you need a reliable legal expert to represent you in court. The Healthcare Fraud Group has a consistent record of delivering the best possible outcome for our clients. You may set you an appointment with one of our legal experts just by calling us at 888-402-4054.
