AG Yost alleges eight people stole $542,176 from a Medicaid program
A grand jury has indicted eight people, including five charged with stealing a combined $542,176 from the Medicaid funds and three of whom allegedly stole from nursing home residents.
“Caregivers are meant to protect the vulnerable, not exploit them,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in a release. “My office will never tolerate thieves who line their pockets at the expense of elderly, disabled and low-income Ohioans.”
According to a release, the cases include two Medicaid providers who billed for in-home services while they were traveling in the Caribbean, nowhere near the patient, a home-health aide who billed while a client was treated by doctors and nurses in a hospital, and a man from Columbus who allegedly stole money from their relative suffering from dementia.
According to the press release, one of the people who was accused was allegedly responsible for stealing more than $400,000 from Medicaid.
Ohio’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which operates within the Health Care Fraud Section and collaborates with federal, state and local officials to uncover Medicaid fraud, investigated the cases and secured the indictments in Franklin County, according to the press release.
The unit discovered the majority of fraudsters in Columbus, the press release said.
A 56-year-old Kimberly Henry was one of those fraudsters. Yost’s office accused her of billing for in-home services, even though her client was in a hospital for four months. As a result, she stole $16,102 from the Medicaid funds from October 2024 to February 2025.
Astashiona McDonald, 26, and Diamond Tate, 27, both of Columbus, were also indicted because they allegedly committed forgery and stole $3,500 from a resident of a Columbus long-term-care facility.
The unit caught them because the person whose money was stolen reported to the authorities that he had nine missing checks, two of which had been cashed. When the unit’s investigators found the checks, they discovered that they were written to and cashed by McDonald, whom the victim didn’t know. Tate, McDonald’s romantic interest, was helping McDonald commit the crime.
Another Columbus resident who committed fraud was Brian Otler, 43, who allegedly stole from a person in a protected class and fraudulently used credit cards.
According to a release, he allegedly stole money from his relative’s bank accounts from December 2024 to March 2025. Authorities allege he stole $35,335, which he allegedly used to pay off his personal debt.
While he was doing that, his relative suffering from dementia was living in a long-term-care facility.
The investigators also discovered one case of fraud in Cleveland. The press release said that Darnicia Burge, 27, allegedly forged timesheets and double-billed for overlapping shifts at her two jobs, resulting in her stealing $1,969 from Medicaid funds.
The investigators added that Burge committed fraud 272 times by billing for home-health services, even though her timesheets showed she was physically at another job at a care facility.
Another major city in Ohio where fraud happened was Akron. According to the release, investigators discovered that Ebony Jones, 23, stole $412,219 from Medicaid funds. In addition to billing for in-home services during her nine trips to Jamaica from 2022 to 2025, Jones allegedly billed for daily services to two clients who told investigators they hadn’t seen Jones for three years.
While most of these fraud cases happened in big cities, people were scamming the system in smaller towns as well. Authorities allege Robert Lomas, 62, of Defiance, stole $106,620 from Medicaid funds, and Tina Turnre, 54, of Ironton, stole $5,266 from those funds.
Yost, who will leave his job at the beginning of next month, began fighting against Medicaid fraud back in April.
