Hot Springs day care worker facing Medicaid fraud charge

An employee of a Hot Springs day care center who said earlier this year that she had reported billing discrepancies to the state has been arrested on a charge of Medicaid fraud, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced Tuesday.

Tonashae Echols, the therapy manager at Little Bitty City Therapeutic Services, is accused of making false statements about her income so that her children could qualify for Medicaid, Rutledge said in a news release.

According to an investigator's affidavit, Echols, 33, listed her annual family income as $24,600 on an application for Medicaid on the same day in 2015 that she listed her own income as $90,000 on a loan application.

At the time, eligibility for children in a family of four for Medicaid's ARKids A program was limited to those in households with annual incomes of up to $34,434.96, investigator Laurie Jo Stowers of Rutledge's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit wrote.

Echols then billed Medicaid for services the day care provided to the children from November 2015 through July 2017, the news release says. The affidavit lists the amount of claims paid by the program at $61,772.

Echols was charged with one count of Medicaid fraud, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000.

Echols in February told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that she contacted authorities after noticing billing discrepancies in October 2017.

She said she notified parents and "anyone we ever billed" about the problem and requested that state officials lead additional billing audits.

Further review linked the discrepancies to a day care administrator who was then fired, Echols said then.

Rutledge spokesman Amanda Priest said Tuesday that no one else has been charged in the attorney general's investigation.

Calls on Tuesday by the Democrat-Gazette to the phone number listed as Echols' in the affidavit weren't answered. The voice mail greeting said the mailbox was full and could not accept new messages.

According to the affidavit, the investigation started after the unit was contacted by a "private citizen" about "potential fraudulent billings" submitted by the day care.

A review of the day care's billing records found that two of the recipients were Echols' children, Stowers wrote.

The children had been receiving Medicaid benefits when Echols and her husband, Robert, adopted them as infants, Stowers said in the affidavit.

In an October 2015 application to continue the children's benefits, Echols declared that her annual income was $12,000 and that her husband's was $12,600, Stowers wrote.

The same day, she listed her annual salary in a small-business loan application as $90,000, the investigator wrote.

Echols also listed assets worth $505,500 and liabilities of $349,500, for a net worth of $156,000, Stowers wrote. The assets included a house worth $335,000, according to a copy of the application filed with the affidavit. Echols reported paying $1,800 a month on a mortgage with a balance of $260,000, according to the application.

From October 2015 until September 2017, business and personal bank accounts that Echols and her husband opened had an average monthly balance of more than $20,000, the investigator wrote.

The bank records document "thousands of dollars spent at restaurants, retail stores, fitness clubs, and online," while social media posts document family out-of-town trips to the beach elsewhere, Stowers wrote.

As of August 2017, the day care worked with 328 families in Howard, Miller, Little River, Garland and Sevier counties through Head Start, a federal early-childhood development program.

The day care opened in 2010 and offers services such as therapy and behavioral interventions to infants and young children with developmental disabilities.

Metro on 11/21/2018

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