A behavioral health services provider from Charlotte was sentenced to 135 months in prison for multiple crimes, including Medicaid fraud, COVID-19 relief fraud, and money laundering, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina announced on Friday.
Ashley Nicole Cross, 42, was convicted of healthcare fraud, making false statements related to healthcare, promotional money laundering, wire fraud, and conspiracy.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Cross owned and operated Odyssey Health Group (OHG), a Charlotte-based company that provided outpatient behavioral health services and was enrolled with South Carolina Medicaid. Between 2016 and 2021, Cross and her company submitted fraudulent Medicaid claims totaling $1.3 million for services that were never actually provided.
Cross was found to have used personal identifying information (PII) from Medicaid beneficiaries—some of which she purchased—to carry out the fraudulent scheme. She instructed her employees to fabricate clinical service notes to support the false claims. When audits of OHG’s claims began in September 2019, Cross submitted fake patient records and made false statements to auditors to conceal her wrongdoing.
The investigation also revealed that Cross laundered money from the scheme, using it to purchase Medicaid beneficiary information.
In addition to the Medicaid fraud, Cross fraudulently obtained more than $287,000 in COVID-19 relief funds through Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans between April 2020 and May 2022. She submitted false payroll and employee information for OHG and Gucci International Inc., an event planning business owned by her boyfriend, who was under federal indictment at the time.
Cross was sentenced to 135 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $481,436.08 in restitution.
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