PRESS ADVISORY

Monday, October 27, 2008

Owner of KIYA House Pleads Guilty To Medicaid Fraud Charges

Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker announced today that Angela Denise Cosby, a/k/a Angela Denise Jones, the owner/operator of KIYA House, Inc. and KIYA Club Comprehensive Treatment Center (collectively referred to herein as “KIYA”) pled guilty this morning in DeKalb County Superior Court to two counts of Medicaid Fraud.   Cosby was sentenced by Judge Dan Coursey under the First Offender Act to one year in prison, followed by nineteen years on probation, plus restitution in the amount of $352,374.00.

Cosby owned and operated KIYA, which provided therapeutic residential services and mental health services to children.   Ms. Cosby operated several group homes that were located in DeKalb, Bibb, Clayton, Crawford, and Rockdale Counties.

Cosby hired psychologists to provide the mental health services to children and instructed her staff to enroll the psychologists as providers in the state’s Medicaid program.   Once the psychologists were enrolled as Medicaid providers, Cosby caused false claims to be submitted to Medicaid for mental health services in excess of the number of mental health services that were actually provided by the psychologists.  Many of these submitted charges were for days that the psychologists were not even present at KIYA, and false Medicaid claims were even submitted when one of the psychologists was on vacation and out of the country.   On the days the psychologists were at KIYA, Cosby caused false Medicaid claims to be submitted for more hours than the psychologists actually worked.   Cosby then instructed her staff to fabricate notes in the children’s files to match the false Medicaid claims.

Additionally, Cosby entered into contracts with the state’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) in which she agreed that KIYA would provide mental health services and residential services to children.   Cosby then caused claims to be submitted to Medicaid for mental health services for children that were referred to KIYA by DJJ, when, in fact, these mental health services were already being reimbursed by DJJ and therefore were not properly billable to and reimbursable by Medicaid.

In announcing the plea, Attorney General Baker stated, “Medicaid fraud is deplorable enough standing alone, but it is made infinitely worse when child patients form the basis for the false claims.”   He went on to say that, “we prosecute these cases not just to recover tax payer dollars, but also to protect the integrity of a system that serves those most at-risk.”

The investigation was handled by Senior Assistant Attorney General D. Williams-McNeely, Special Agents Lawrence Kelly and Patrick Aviotti as well as Analyst Zwella Boyd of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, and Investigative Auditor Kim Kolesnik and Investigative Nurse Cynthia Vassell of the Department of Audits and Accounts.