Timothy Mark Harron, who with his wife bilked North Carolina Medicaid out of millions of dollars, was sentenced today to 144 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $4,321,590.39 in restitution to the North Carolina Medicaid Program.
Harron’s wife, Latisha, was sentenced to 14 years in May.
The Harrons operated home health services in Roanoke Rapids and Ahoskie and also committed Medicaid fraud from their Las Vegas penthouse and places around the globe.
Mr. Harron pleaded guilty in April to charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and aggravated identity theft, according to a press release from North Carolina Eastern District United States Attorneys Office.
The court also sentenced Mr. Harron to forfeit various assets as a part of his case.
Court documents reflect that forfeitable items include up to $13,396,921.64 in cash, a British Aerospace Bae 125-800A aircraft, a 2017 Aston Martin DB 11 sports car; a 2016 Ford F-150 Supercrew pickup; real property held in the name of Assured Healthcare Systems in Hertford County; as well as various other items of designer jewelry and luxury items seized from the defendant’s penthouse condominium in Las Vegas.
“This case is purely about greed and an insatiable desire to live a life of luxury. Stealing millions from Medicaid through lies, the defendant and his wife achieved their life of luxury – at least for a while,” said Acting United States Attorney G. Norman Acker III. “But there is a serious price to be paid when you purchase your private jet, resort stays, jewelry, and fine dining on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. The defendant and his wife will pay that price by spending more than a decade of their lives in prison. I wish to thank our many state and federal counterparts in Las Vegas and beyond for their work in bringing these partners in crime to justice.”
FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert R. Wells said, “The Harrons targeted the Medicaid program in North Carolina which the most vulnerable North Carolinians depend on in their time of need. Our agents and law enforcement partners stand ready to work together to make sure those who attack the most vulnerable pay greatly for their crimes.”
Mr. Harron, 52, of Las Vegas, admitted to conspiring with his wife to carry out a massive fraud upon the North Carolina Medicaid Program by billing the government for fictitious home health services.
According to the charges, Mrs. Harron created, and was operating, Agape Healthcare Systems, a Medicaid home health provider, in Roanoke Rapids.
As charged, to enroll Agape as a Medicaid provider, Mrs. Harron fraudulently concealed her prior felony conviction for identity theft.
In 2012, she moved out of North Carolina to Maryland. Despite that move, she continued to bill Medicaid as though Agape was providing home health services to North Carolina recipients.
In May of 2017, Mrs. Harron moved to Las Vegas to live with Mr. Harron, and the two were married in 2018.
Together they formed Assured Health Care Systems, a company purportedly operated by Mr. Harron, its president.
Although he publicly portrayed Assured as a successful healthcare company, in reality it was funded entirely by Agape’s fraudulent Medicaid claims.
The indictment alleges that the Harrons also registered Assured as a Medicaid provider.
In so doing, it is charged that Mr. Harron’s own prior felony fraud conviction was concealed from Medicaid on enrollment documents.
Mr. Harron and his wife worked together to expand the Agape fraud upon Medicaid — fraudulently billing the program for more than $10 million, just in the period between 2017 and 2019.
Mr. Harron admitted that he and his wife carried out the fraud by exploiting an eligibility tool that was entrusted only to Medicaid providers.
Specifically, Mr. Harron and his wife searched publicly available sources, such as obituary postings on the internet by North Carolina funeral homes, to locate recently deceased North Carolinians. He admitted that the two would then extract from the obituary postings certain personal information for the deceased, including their name, date of birth, and date of death.
Then, utilizing the extracted information, the defendants would query the North Carolina Medicaid eligibility tool to determine whether the deceased individual had a Medicaid identification number.
If the deceased North Carolinian had a valid MIN and was otherwise eligible for Medicaid coverage during their life, the defendants would use that individual’s identity to back-bill Medicaid, through Agape, for up to one year of fictitious home health services that were allegedly rendered prior to the death of the individual.
North Carolina Medicaid then dispersed millions to Agape, all of which flowed into accounts controlled by Harron and her husband.