Couple scammed Medicaid out of nearly $160K, cops say

A 58-year-old social worker and his fiancée, a case manager, were arrested after authorities say they scammed Medicaid out of nearly $160,000, according to court documents.

Anthony Handal and Sandra Mora, 46, billed Medicaid between September 2015 and March for services they never provided, said investigators from the Florida Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

They say Handal and Mora worked for MTS Health Services, which has an office at 5025 S. Orange Ave. Handal was a licensed clinical social worker and Mora was a case manager, documents state.

“In most cases, Mora initiated contact with these children and families in need of services and collected their Medicaid information,” investigators wrote in an arrest affidavit. “After gathering the required data, Handal and Mora would create false documentation to support the fraudulent billing later submitted to MTS and then the Medicaid Program.”

In one case, Handal and Mora were billing Medicaid for child therapy sessions two or three times a week when they actually were only doing them twice a month, the documents say.

Authorities say the suspects billed Medicaid for sessions in December and January, but the child’s mother told authorities they were out of town for most of those months. Sessions included Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, according to documents.

In all, authorities said Handal and Mora billed Medicaid nearly for 900 hours of services for the same client when they actually performed about 100 hours worth of therapy for the child, authorities said. According to the affidavit, investigators had the child’s mother make a recorded phone call to Handal where he told her to go along with the inflated billing and he would “take care” of her.

Handal and Mora were taken to the Orange County Jail on charges of Medicaid fraud and organized fraud. Handal’s bail was set at $200,000. Mora is being held on $120,000 bail.