A Georgia man has been sentenced to nearly half a decade in prison after being convicted of scamming Arizona’s Medicaid system, often known as AHCCCS, or the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.
Kenneth Terrell Harrison, 45, of College Park, Georgia, was sentenced on Monday to 52 months in prison plus three years of supervised release for his involvement in the fraud, according to the US Attorney’s Office. He was also forced to pay restitution of more than $6.5 million.
According to federal prosecutors, Harrison admitted to owning Aurtism, LLC, an outpatient mental health therapy organization based in Mesa. Aurtism applied to AHCCCS in 2019 but did not declare his ownership interest because he was concerned about being denied due to his criminal history, according to the feds.
According to investigators, Harrison later admitted to falsely charging the health care system. The feds noted in a news release that he began getting AHCCCS identifying numbers for select Medicaid participants in 2020, some of whom were legitimate patients and others not.
According to federal officials, nearly all of those patients were members of the American Indian Health Plan, which Autism utilized to unlawfully bill AHCCCS for services that were never provided. According to investigators, the total scam amount was $6,538,485.09.
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