CHARLOTTE, NC – Markuetric Stringfellow, 37, of Powder Springs, Georgia, was sentenced today to 78 months in prison and 3 years of supervised freedom for defrauding Medicaid programs in North and South Carolina, announced Andrew Murray, US Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina and the US Attorney, Peter M. McCoy, of the US Attorney’s Office for the South Carolina District. In addition to the imposed prison sentence, US District Judge Kenneth D. Bell also ordered Stringfellow to pay $ 5,278,550 as a refund.
The North Carolina Scheme
According to the court documents filed and today’s sentencing hearing, Stringfellow was a resident of Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina, and a partner at Everlasting Vitality, LLC (EV) and Do-It-4-The Hood Corporation (D4H ). D4H operated after-school programs in Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Rocky-Mount, North Carolina. Beginning around January 7, 2016 and continuing through November 12, 2018, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators executed a conspiracy to defraud North Carolina’s Medicaid program by soliciting illegal kickbacks from various drug testing laboratories in return. North Carolina references Medicaid beneficiaries obtained through after-school programs operated by EV and D4H.
According to court documents, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators paid individuals to recruit at-risk youth, in particular children who were eligible for Medicaid, for after-school EVs or D4Hs and youth mentoring programs. Once enrolled, children were required to send urine samples for drug testing. Stringfellow and his co-conspirators conspired with certain laboratories to conduct drug testing of urine samples sent on behalf of children enrolled in EV and D4H and received bribes after the laboratories were reimbursed by North Carolina Medicaid.
In addition to the kickback scheme, Stringfellow and his conspirators developed a scheme to defraud North Carolina Medicaid, referring clients to labs that they knew would file fraudulent claims and receive reimbursement based on drug testing services that did not meet the requirements of the drug testing policy. For example, on some occasions, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators obtained personally identifiable information (PII) from D4H customers, such as names, addresses, birth dates and Medicaid beneficiary numbers, which they provided to drug testing laboratories. In turn, laboratories used PII from D4H customers to send drug test orders to North Carolina Medicaid that were fraudulent because, among other reasons, drug tests were not clinically necessary or urine samples were not from the beneficiaries of Medicaid to whose names they were submitted. As soon as North Carolina Medicaid paid the fraudulent claims submitted by the testing labs for these unauthorized and medically unnecessary drug tests, the labs paid the companies under the control of Stringfellow and others, in an agreed percentage of their Medicaid refund. .
The South Carolina Scheme
In addition to running a scam in North Carolina, Stringfellow defrauded the South Carolina Medicaid program. According to court documents filed with the United States District Court in South Carolina, Stringfellow owned a franchise for Wrights Care Services LLC (Wrights Care), a qualified provider of Medicaid rehabilitation behavioral health services in South Carolina. Wrights Care was located at 1320 Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina, and maintained separate franchise locations throughout South Carolina, including Spartanburg, Pickens, Cheraw, Society Hill, Bennettsville, Hartsville and Conway. In April 2014, Wrights Care became a participating provider in the South Carolina Medicaid program, which allowed Wrights Care to submit reimbursable behavioral guidance services requests under Medicaid.
Beginning around 2014, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators defrauded South Carolina’s Medicaid program by filing fraudulent claims for services that were not provided, partially provided or did not qualify for reimbursement. According to court records, to support fraudulent claims for reimbursement submitted to South Carolina’s Medicaid, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators sent billing records of forged patients and false medical notes. In addition, court records show that, after learning that there was a Medicaid audit for Wrights Care, Stringfellow and his co-conspirators attempted to mislead South Carolina’s Medicaid auditors. On or around March 2015, Stringfellow met other Wrights Care associates in Columbia for a “banknote party”, during which co-conspirators created false and fraudulent billing records to substantiate previously submitted fraudulent Medicaid claims, false signatures and forged audit subjects, which they then submitted to South Carolina’s Medicaid auditors in response to the audit.
In July 2020, the criminal case pending against Stringfellow in the federal court of South Carolina was transferred to the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina for further proceedings. On August 21, 2020, Stringfellow pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit Medicaid fraud in connection with both federal lawsuits.
Stringfellow will be ordered to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence after designation of the federal establishment.
In making today’s announcement, US Attorney Murray and US Attorney McCoy praised the investigative work of the FBI field offices in Charlotte, Columbia and Atlanta, and the Medicaid Investigation Divisions in Raleigh, Columbia and Atlanta, and thanked the US District Attorney’s Office for the Northern Georgia District for assistance and coordination.
US assistant prosecutors, Michael Savage, of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Charlotte and Brook Andrews, of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Columbia, sued the case.