NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — A federal grand jury in Norfolk returned an indictment on Thursday charging a Williamsburg wellness center owner with defrauding Virginia Medicaid and other health care programs out of more than $2 million.
According to the indictment, 45-year-old Williamsburg resident Maria Kokolis was the owner of Pamisage Inc., a center for integrative behavioral health and medicine, with a focus on weight management issues.
Beginning in or about 2018, and continuing through February 2020, court documents say Kokolis executed a scheme to defraud and overbill various health care benefit programs and the Virginia Medical Assistance Program (Medicaid).
Paperwork says she was charging 45 minutes to an hour of face-to-face psychotherapy services for non-comparable services like sending messages through the company’s smartphone app or monitoring a client’s data.
Prosecutors say Kokolis billed these psychotherapy services for times when she was out of the country on vacation and when the clients were out of state or sick in the hospital.
According to the indictment, Kokolis used the names, Medicaid ID numbers, and other identifying information of her clients in submitting these false claims to the health care benefit programs. Kokolis received a total of at least $2,189,342 in fraudulent health care benefit program reimbursements, a portion of which came from the U.S. government, documents show.
Kokolis is charged with health care fraud and aggravated identity theft.
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