COUNSELING SERVICE OWNER PLEADS GUILTY TO MEDICAID FRAUD

Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr., announced that Stanley Junious Benn, 42, of Arrowood Court in Rosedale, pleaded guilty to submitting more than $240,000 in false claims to the Medicaid program. Benn entered a guilty plea before the Honorable Susan Souder in Baltimore County Circuit Court for his actions while operating Resolutions Unlimited, Inc., which provided a type of counseling services to eligible Medicaid recipients from 2002 until 2004.

According to the statement of facts read in court, from May, 2002 through November 18, 2003, when a search and seizure warrant was executed on the company’s offices, Mr. Benn billed for over 5000 counseling services, for which Medicaid paid him over $340,000. However, the investigation by the Office of the Attorney General revealed that over 3,600 of those billings were for services that Benn knew had not been provided by his counselors. In one example noted by the State, Benn billed Medicaid for 166 counseling sessions despite being aware that the client had been seen only 3 times. The total value of all of Benn’s false billings exceeded $245,000.

The case was prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office. The MFCU conducted the investigation with assistance from the Mental Hygiene Administration (MHA), which suspended payments to Resolutions Unlimited in March of 2004. MHA has been working with the MFCU to root out fraud in its programs, and several cases of possible fraudulent behavior by MHA providers are currently under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office.

Sentencing has been scheduled for May 11, 2005.

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