[A] West Rutland woman was ordered to pay $77,306 in restitution for submitting claims for health care services for her children that were never provided, according to federal prosecutors.
In addition to the restitution, Misti Baker, 36, received a sentence of time served and two years of supervised release for her health care fraud conviction. It’s not clear how long Baker had served prior to sentencing. Judge Geoffrey Crawford handed down the sentence Friday in federal court in Rutland.
Crawford ordered Baker to pay the $77,306 in restitution to the Vermont Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
Baker pleaded guilty to the offense Nov. 15.
Between 2012 and 2015, according to court records, Baker defrauded the state’s Children’s Personal Care Services program. The program is jointly funded by federal and state Medicaid money.
The program, court records state, is designed to help cover costs for care and daily living activities for Medicaid-eligible children. The charge against Baker alleges she submitted about 100 time sheets to Aris Corp., a company that administers the CPCS program.
The time sheets indicated Baker’s three children had received care from providers, when they actually never received such services, according to court records.
Baker had Aris send checks to post office boxes she had access to, made out to caregivers she said provided services to her children, documents stated.
The CPCS program allows parents to hire friends or family members to provide care to Medicaid-eligible children, with the hired person considered an employee of the parent.
Aris approves the employment, and the employee submits time sheets to the parent, who approves them and submits them to Aris for payment, according to court records.
The fraud came to light, prosecutors wrote in filings, when the caregivers were contacted by the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration for failing to claim the money from the purported payments on their taxes.
The caregivers told authorities they didn’t provide the care to Baker’s children and never received any of the payments.
One caregiver did tell investigators she received a payment only once from Baker, but it was to repay a debt, not for care of the children.
In total, according to IRS records, the caregivers purportedly received $77,306 for providing services to Baker’s children between 2012 and 2015.
Prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines called for a jail term in the range of 10 to 16 months, and they asked a judge to order the minimum term, with half to be served under supervised release.
The jail time was warranted, prosecutors argued, because Baker was charged with “multiple additional theft offenses” while on pretrial release as the federal case was pending.
Attorney Christopher Davis, who represented Baker, could not be reached for comment.
