Embezzlement at Sava Senior Care
The Star-Telegram had a story about nursing home employees who stole and embezzled money from the residents at a nursing home. This is outrageous and it happens quite often. Taxpayers are the ones who end up paying for these thefts. The nursing homes should pay more attention to their finances and laws need to be passed that provide for transparency in nursing home financial transactions.
Terry Dean West and Elizandro Valdez Arana pleaded guilty this week to federal felony charges related to their embezzlement of about $42,000 from Medicaid, insurance carriers and a corporation that operated 10 Texas nursing homes including one in Fort Worth. They pled to making false statements related to health care matters and aiding and abetting in the embezzlement scheme. There is no reason mentioned why they weren't charged with embezzlement.
West was working as a financial analyst for the Georgia-based Sava Senior Care Corp. in 2006 when he devised a scheme to embezzle money from Medicaid, private insurance carriers and Sava, which operated 10 Texas nursing homes and dozens of others nationwide.
West’s duties including overseeing the business managers of the Pampa Nursing Center in Pampa and the Arlington Heights Health and Rehabilitation Center in Fort Worth. In that capacity, he was required to refund excess payments to Medicaid, insurance carriers or residents of the centers. West hired Arana to provide his name and that of an alias to use to cash funds containing the embezzled funds.
West admitted altering patient records to show non-existent credit balances and to create false names and addresses of the parties to whom the refunds should be mailed. He then issued refund checks to those newly created parties and mailed them to a post office box the pair had rented. They cashed the checks for their own use.
The scheme involved altering patient records to show non-existent credit balances and to create false names and addresses where refunds were mailed.
