Youth Football Coach Caught for Elaborate Fraudulent Medicaid Scheme

Partnership among the agencies was the key to investigating and prosecuting the case.

By Dhina Clement, Marketing –
Matthew Harrell, a young football coach was convicted and sentenced to 11 years of prison for running Health care fraud. As a coach, Harrell had access to the information of those he sponsored for football camp and other after-school activities. He then used that information to bill Medicaid for mental health services on behalf of those kids, even though the services were never provided to them. He hired people to work for him and even interviewed medical providers to obtain their credentials. He ran the scam from 2012 to 2015 and made 2.5 million dollars. He was discovered and investigated in December 2019 and in March 2020 pled guilty.

His scheme was uncovered when a Medicaid Fraud Personnel made an unannounced visit to one of his companies. Medical personnel, other health agencies, police and FBI all worked to uncover the elaborate scheme. The partnership among the agencies was key to investigating and prosecuting the case. There is one tool that could have helped solve the problem quicker and with veiwer resources. EyeDetect® can help identify if someone has been involved in illegal or inappropriate activities — such as falsified information, robbery, drug use, bribery, sexual assault, espionage, terrorism, or other inappropriate behavior. A person taking an EyeDetect exam sits at a desk and answers true-or-false questions on a tablet while the technology uses a high-resolution infrared camera to track changes in pupil size and differences in the way the subject reads statements. It takes 30 minutes and is 86% accurate.

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Photo by / Keith Johnston