WASHINGTON – Joseph Tamjong, 51, of Lanham, Maryland, was sentenced at the moment to twenty months in jail for stealing greater than $700,000 from the D.C. Medicaid program. The sentence was introduced by U.S. Lawyer Matthew M. Graves, FBI Particular Agent in Cost Wayne A. Jacobs, of the Washington Subject Workplace’s Felony and Cyber Division, Particular Agent in Cost Maureen R. Dixon, of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers’ Workplace of Inspector Common for the area that features Washington, D.C., and Daniel W. Lucas, Inspector Common for the District of Columbia.
Along with the jail time period, U.S. District Court docket Choose Christopher R. Cooper ordered that Tamjong serve three years of supervised launch following his jail sentence. He additionally ordered him to pay $733,405 in restitution and $396,155 in a forfeiture cash judgment. Tamjong pleaded responsible to at least one depend of well being care fraud on November 28, 2022.
Between December 2014 and February 2022, Tamjong was employed as a Private Care Aide and/or a Participant-Directed Employee offering private care providers to residents of the District of Columbia who wanted help performing actions of every day dwelling, comparable to getting out and in of mattress, bathing, dressing, and consuming. Tamjong submitted false timesheets that claimed he offered these providers to Medicaid beneficiaries when, in truth, he didn’t. Though he dedicated a bulk of his felony conduct when he was in the US, he overtly induced Medicaid to be billed for about 3,400 hours of providers that he purportedly offered when he was touring exterior the nation. On 156 separate events, he claimed he offered 24 hours of providers in a single day. In complete, he defrauded Medicaid of $733,405, personally receiving not less than $395,155 in fraudulent wages from the scheme.
Since December 2018, 12 former private care aides have been sentenced in the US District Court docket for the District of Columbia for defrauding the District’s Medicaid program.
The federal government urges the general public to supply suggestions and help to cease well being care fraud. When you have details about people committing well being care fraud, please name the Division of Well being and Human Providers’ Workplace of Inspector Common hotline at 800- HHS‑TIPS (800 447-8477) or the D.C. Workplace of the Inspector Common at 800-724-TIPS (800 274-8477).
This case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Subject Workplace, the Division of Well being and Human Providers’ Workplace of Inspector Common, and the District of Columbia’s Workplace of the Inspector Common’s Medicaid Fraud Management Unit.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Lawyer Kondi Kleinman with help from Paralegal Specialist Michon Tart.