DECATUR – A Decatur woman has pled guilty after an Illinois State Police investigation found she was overpaid by deceiving her employers.
45-year-old Yolando Plato pled guilty to Theft of Government Property (by Deception) on January 18, 2017, in Macon County.
Illinois State Police officials announced the felony conviction Monday after an investigation by the ISP Medicaid Fraud Control Bureau (MFCB) revealed Plato had been receiving money from two different government programs. Plato worked as personal assistant for the Illinois Department of Human Service (IDHS). During that same time, Plato was also working for Help at Home Services, a private company that provides services for the elderly and receives funding from the Illinois Department of Aging.
The ISP investigation determined Plato billed for overlapping hours from both IDHS and Help at Home from May 30, 2013, through July 4, 2014 for a total of 339.85 hours. This resulted in a total of $3,889.36 in fraudulent overpayments from the state of Illinois.
ISP MFCB Commander, Captain Brian Ley says it’s especially troubling when people steal from government programs designed to help the state’s most vulnerable citizens.
“Our goal is to investigate these cases and send a message that we are monitoring how Medicaid dollars are being spent; all in an effort to deter future criminal acts against the Medicaid program,” Ley adds.
Captain Ley serves as a member of Governor Rauner’s Health Care Fraud Elimination Task Force. The task force was created in April 2016 to look strategically and comprehensively into fraud, waste and abuse in taxpayer funded health care systems.
The MFCB works a myriad of cases targeting fraud and abuse of the Medicaid Provider Program. The MFCB is a member of the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Units and receives direction from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
Plato received 24 months of probation, will serve 30 hours of community service and was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $3,889.36.
The conviction is the culmination of an ISP MFCB investigation and was prosecuted by the Illinois Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Bureau, Springfield Office.
