Owings Mills Woman Sentenced for Medicaid Fraud

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler today announced that Susan Carol Mehlman, 54, of Owings Mills, MD, was convicted of Medicaid fraud in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. Judge Martin P. Welch sentenced her to five years in prison with all but six months suspended and to be served in home detention. Mehlman, a licensed psychologist and Medicaid provider of mental health services, was also sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation upon her release from home detention. Mehlman has already paid $96,750 in restitution and penalties to the state Medicaid program.

While rendering therapy services to clients at A Caring Hand, an adult medical daycare center located in Anne Arundel County, Mehlman submitted claims to and received payment from Medicaid totaling more than $118,000 between February, 2004 and September, 2005. Mehlman repeatedly submitted claims for rendering as many as 13 units of service in a single day, although each unit of service is approximately 45-50 minutes, and the daycare center was only open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. She also billed and received payment for family therapy, although there was no evidence that such services were ever rendered.

Mehlman was suspended from the Medicaid program and as a provider of public mental health services in September, 2005. As an additional consequence of her conviction, Mehlman faces exclusion from the program as a Medicaid provider for a period of at least five years.

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). 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. In making today’s announcement, Attorney General Gansler thanked Assistant Attorney General Eileen McInerney for her work on the case.