Sisters who ran home health care companies jailed for fraud

Back in 2017, the city of Pittsburgh gave Arlinda Moriarty a special proclamation for “Arlinda Moriarty Day” in honor of her work as owner of Moriarty Consultants, a home health care company.

No one who gave her that recognition knew she was a criminal who had been ripping off millions from Medicaid since 2011.

Now she’s headed to federal prison along with her sister and an uncle.

U. S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon on Wednesday sentenced Moriarty, 53, of Cranberry, to seven years behind bars. The judge gave her sister, Daynelle Dickens, 48, of Pittsburgh, two years. Their uncle, Tony Brown, 65, got three years of probation with three months of that on home detention.

The judge ordered Moriarty to pay $8.7 million in restitution to the Pennsylvania Medicaid program. Dickens will have to pay $1 million and Brown $43,000.

All three had pleaded guilty in May after being indicted in 2018 with a group of employees.

The U.S. attorney’s office said the sisters and others, including other family members, submitted millions in bogus bills to Medicaid for services they never provided through a series of companies they controlled.

Moriarty and Dickens ran Moriarty Consultants on Perrysville Avenue and three other companies: Activity Daily Living Services; Coordination Care; and Everyday People Staffing.

The companies provided meal preparation, transportation and other services to Medicaid recipients in their homes.

From 2011 into the spring of 2017, they took in $87 million in government money.

But it was a fraud. Employees fabricated time sheets by saying they provided in- home services when they did not. Some of those who submitted claims didn’t even live in Western Pennsylvania.

Employees also wrote down the names of ghost employees who in exchange received kickbacks for allowing their names to be used.

Prosecutors also said the sisters paid kickbacks to consumers who had participated in the fake time sheet scheme. When state auditors came calling, Moriarty and her criminal associates gave them fake paperwork.

U. S. Attorney Cindy Chung praised the work of law enforcement on the case, which included the FBI, the state attorney general’s Medicaid fraud unit, the criminal investigation division of the IRS, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, postal inspectors and the state Bureau of Financial Operations.

“During this elaborate, yearslong scheme, Arlinda Moriarty, her sister, and 13 of their co- conspirators stole millions of dollars from a critical government health care program by billing for in- home services that were never rendered,” Ms. Chung said.

In all, federal authorities charged 16 people in the conspiracy. Fifteen have been convicted. The other one died while the case was pending.