Federal prosecutors have charged two Washington Metropolitan Space Transit Authority prepare operators with defrauding the insurance coverage firm Aflac with faux healthcare claims.
The U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace for the District of Columbia stated in a launch Friday that Michelle Shropshire, 54, of Waldorf, Maryland, and Harlisha Jones, 49, of Clinton, Maryland, submitted purportedly false claims from June 2021 by way of January 2024, thereby defrauding the insurer Aflac.
The legal professional’s workplace stated that the pair solid the signatures of actual medical doctors and used their data to create false physician’s notes and different such paperwork. These paperwork have been then used to file for protection for medical therapies, accidents, and short-term incapacity intervals that didn’t exist.
Federal prosecutors allege that, along with submitting faux claims to profit themselves, the pair additionally helped different WMATA staff file faux claims.
5 of these different staff, Sharon Washington, 53, of Woodbridge, Virginia, Selethia Blake, 53, of Waldorf, Maryland, Brady Turner, 56, of Clinton, Maryland, Lushawn Foreman, 51, of Higher Marlboro, Maryland, and Margot Jackson, 52, of Hughesville, Maryland, have admitted involvement. They’ve pleaded responsible to conspiracy costs, federal prosecutors stated.
Aflac paid at the least $362,035.14 to the group of WMATA staff, with 20% of every individual’s proceeds despatched as a kickback to Ms. Shropshire, the legal professional’s workplace stated.
USAO-DC has charged Ms. Shropshire and Ms. Jones with well being care fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, aggravated id theft and conspiracy.
If convicted, Ms. Shropshire and Ms. Jones resist 20 years in jail for the fraud and conspiracy costs, and an extra obligatory two-year sentence for id theft.
Metro instructed WDVM-TV that it “doesn’t touch upon personnel points.”
