Claremont couple pleads guilty to Medicaid fraud
Published: 05-14-2024 3:31 PM |
CONCORD — A Claremont couple has pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud, seven months after being indicted on charges of submitting more than $40,000 in false mileage reimbursement for travel to treatment programs.
Sarah LaPointe, 29, pleaded guilty in Merrimack County Superior Court on May 13 to two counts of Medicaid fraud and one count of theft by deception, according to state court records.
She was sentenced to 12 months in Merrimack County House of Corrections on the Medicaid fraud conviction, which is to be followed by a consecutive five-to-10-year sentence in state prison, fully suspended for 10 years, on the theft by deception conviction, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office said in a news release on Monday.
Joseph Bye, 31, also pleaded guilty on May 13 to the same charges as LaPointe. He awaits sentencing.
Prosecutors alleged that from 2020 to 2022, Bye and LaPointe stole between them a total of $41,606.62 from the state Medicaid program by submitting fraudulent claims for mileage reimbursement to the Family and Friends Mileage Reimbursement Program.
Bye claimed he was residing in Danville, N.H., and traveling to health care appointments in Concord while LaPointe claimed she was residing in Cornish and traveling for health care appointments to the same facility in Concord as Bye.
In fact, prosecutors said that the couple had been actually living together at an address that was less than a mile and a half away from the treatment facility.
A third defendant in the case, Kimberly Patterson, 52, of Cornish, who has been charged with two counts of Medicaid fraud and one count of perjury, has a plea and sentencing hearing scheduled in Merrimack County Superior Court on May 30, according to court records.
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John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com