JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The owner of a now defunct health care business has been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to repay more than $4 million illegally received by defrauding Medicaid, state officials said.
Regina Thomas, of Bolton, Mississippi, pleaded guilty to five counts of Medicaid fraud and was sentenced Tuesday by Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in a news release.
“When healthcare providers defraud Medicaid, they not only cheat the taxpayers who support this program; they also violate the trust of the people who depend on it,” Fitch said.
Thomas, a licensed practical nurse, operated Total Healthcare Network, Inc., in Jackson until 2019. Fitch’s office opened an investigation after the Division of Medicaid complained of excessive billing, billing for services not rendered and abandonment of an audit. That probe resulted in the discovery of more than $4 million in suspected fraud between Jan. 1, 2015 and Dec. 5, 2019.