Waste of the Day: Medicaid for Fake Doctors’ Appointments

Topline: Former Alabama Medicaid employee Natalie Lewis will serve at least three years in prison for aggravated theft by deception after she stole $103,314 in federal and state funds over five years. 

A Medicaid employee defrauds the systems she served

Lewis was paid just over $200,000 in salary from 2018 to 2024 — between $25,000 and $35,000 annually — according to Open the Books’ database. 

Key facts: Lewis worked at the state Medicaid Agency’s Non-Emergency Transportation Division, which reimburses Medicaid recipients for travel to their doctors’ appointments. Beginning in December 2019, Lewis entered 1,631 claims on behalf of her son — a legitimate Medicaid recipient — to travel to appointments that did not exist and then pocketed the money.  

Lewis already had three prior felony convictions when she was hired in 2006, but she admitted in court she lied on her job application and said she had no convictions. She received a restoration of rights pardon in 2017 for those convictions. 

She will forfeit her state pension after her conviction, but she will get back the contributions she made to her retirement account. That money will go toward the restitution she must pay. 

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.  

Critical quote: “Public employees hold a position of trust, and when that trust is violated, particularly when taxpayer dollars are stolen, there must be consequences,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said. “This sentence makes clear that abuse of public office will not be tolerated, and the people of Alabama will be made whole.”

Crime did not pay this time

Summary: Thankfully for Lewis, her travel expenses will be nonexistent while she serves out her prison sentence. 

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.