Dallas woman sentenced to five years for submitting fraudulent psychotherapy claims

A Dallas woman has been sentenced to 57 months in prison after using the Medicaid provider numbers of four different licensed counselors to submit fraudulent psychotherapy services.

Brenda Ward, president and CEO of H.E.L.P.-Ing Communities Inc., obtained a Medicaid group number and, along with provider numbers, submitted more than $1.6 million in claims to the Texas Medicaid program. Ward used the identites of 290 Medicaid beneficiaries to submit the claims, whcih were for nonexistent individual, family and group psychotherapy sessions between 2009 and 2015. Medicaid paid more than $800,000 of the claims. Announcement