20 people, health care business and church charged in sober living scheme in Arizona

PHOENIX AP Twenty people a mental robustness business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona s Medicaid undertaking was defrauded million in a scheme involving billing for mental healthcare therapy and addiction rehabilitation the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes Related Articles FAA extends flight limits at Newark airport into June because of controller shortage and tech issues Flight evacuated arrested following reports of a bomb threat on jetliner at San Diego airport Joe Biden s cancer comment at former Massachusetts power plant resurfaces goes viral Levi Strauss agrees to sell Casual Friday staple Dockers for up to million George Wendt who played a beloved barfly on Cheers and unveiled another home onstage dies at The indictment informed Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Vitality LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated Personnel say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral robustness business which received money from the Arizona Robustness Care Cost Containment System and then paid the homes for the clients in violation of state law Money laundering charges alleged Happy House Behavioral Physical condition paid million in July to a Hope of Life International Church which later wired million to an entity in Rwanda The charges against Happy House Behavioral Strength include conspiracy fraud forgery theft and money laundering The Associated Press left an email with a lawyer representing Happy House Behavioral Vitality In a comment Hope of Life International Church announced it was unjustly charged with money laundering for accepting a donation from a licensed sober living facility that was a tenant of the church and was later accused of defrauding the state s Medicaid plan The church announced it didn t have access to the sober living facility s internal operations financial practices or management decisions The church s only relationship was that of a landlord and later as a recipient of a donation a donation accepted in good faith consistent with its mission and longstanding practice the message disclosed In all more than people and several companies have been charged in cases brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes office in the state s crackdown on Medicaid fraud and unlicensed sober living homes multiple of which targeted tribal locality members The state had suspended payments to more than providers as part of the crackdown The scam had left an unknown number of Native Americans homeless on the streets of metro Phoenix as fraudulent sober living homes lost their funding and turned former residents out onto the streets Navajos account for greater part Native Americans grappling with addictions who have been affected by the scam Navajo executives say that in selected cases people who ended up in the homes were picked up in unmarked vans and driven to the Phoenix area from faraway places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona and parts of New Mexico and Utah