Dayton nurse sentenced for health care fraud
3 more years added to sentence; $135K restitution ordered.
The nurse already serving a 10-year sentence for manslaughter in the Makayla Norman case will spend three more in a federal prison for two counts of health care fraud.
Mollie Parsons, 47, was sentenced Tuesday in Dayton’s U.S. District Court by Judge Walter Rice, who also ordered Parsons to pay $134,761.84 in restitution.
Parsons tearfully said she loved Makayla and cared for her for years before selfishly deciding to take the money but stay home and raise her son. Parsons was supposed to care for Makayla eight hours per day six days per week.
Makayla weighed 28 pounds when she died on March 1, 2011. Makayla’s body was covered with filth and open bedsores, her hair and eyebrows infested with lice and her diaper hadn’t been changed for some time, according to Dayton police.
Makayla couldn’t speak, move or feed herself. In all, five people were prosecuted for various crimes connected to Makayla’s death, including her mother and doctor.
“I loved Makayla, I did,” Parsons told Rice. “I think about her every day and I dream about her.”
Parsons said she knows she will have to answer for how she was not there for Makayla when the girl with cerebral palsy needed her most.
“The answer is easy. I didn’t do my job,” Parsons said. “There’s a saying in prison: All money is not good money.”
Rice said that while he was only sentencing Parsons for health care fraud, he called her crime “horrendous” and said, “society failed this young girl, miserably . ... I’ve never seen health care fraud so callous and unthinking.”
Parsons promised to get job skills so she could be employed when she’s released from prison to be able to pay restitution.
In a sentencing memorandum, Parsons’ attorney said “society and the media have demonized Mollie Parsons, painting her as a tyrant, and while her behavior in this case was reprehensible, she is far from the person the media has portrayed.”
Federal public defender Cheryl Bennett wrote that for much of her client’s career, Parsons was a good nurse working with elderly people and started caring for Makayla in 2000.
“In 2009, Mollie and Angela came to an arrangement wherein Angela would primarily care for (Makayla), and Mollie would call in and check on (Makayla’s) status,” Bennett wrote. “She trusted that Angela would not neglect (Makayla), and would notify her of any problems that arose. Mollie did not foresee the end result of her decision; a decision that changed her life and (Makayla’s) life forever.”
A Dayton police detective said daily records kept by Parsons indicated Makayla was in good health with no problems and had been fed when Parsons left at 10 p.m. the day she died.
Two minutes later, Makayla’s mother called 911 and said her daughter was having difficulty breathing. Makayla was rushed to Dayton Children’s Hospital, where she died at 10:30 p.m.