Locked In with Ian Bick - I Ran a $4 Million Medicare Scam — Then the FBI Showed Up 8 Years Later | Sharita Richardson

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Sharita Richardson went from respected educator and mental health business owner to federal inmate. Raised by a single mom in North Carolina, Sharita followed a passion for helping others, leaving behind a career in teaching to open her own mental health agency. But when government regulations changed and the money stopped flowing, she found herself in financial crisis — and made a life-altering decision. What started as a desperate move turned into a multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scheme. Years later, the FBI showed up. In this interview, Sharita breaks down how it all happened, the day she was arrested, and what 23 months in federal prison taught her about survival, guilt, and redemption. #MedicareFraud #TrueCrime #PrisonStory #WhiteCollarCrime #MentalHealthBusiness #LockedInWithIanBick #FBIArrest #FederalPrison #SharitaRichardson #redemptionstory Connect with Sharita Richardson: Instagram: @IamSharitaMona TikTok: @SharitaMona Website: www.freesharita.com Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Get 50% off the Magic Mind offer here: https://www.magicmind.com/IANB50. #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Use code LOCKEDIN for 20% OFF Wooooo Energy Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00:00 The Rise and Fall of a Medicare Fraud Scheme 00:05:50 Career Shift from Law School to Teaching 00:11:45 Starting a Group Home: From Idea to Reality 00:17:52 The Journey from Teacher to Entrepreneur 00:24:11 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Insecurity 00:30:53 Discovering a System Scam 00:36:56 Mastering Accreditation Consulting 00:42:10 Understanding Fluffed Billing Practices 00:48:07 Understanding the Group Home Business Model 00:53:55 Struggling to Maintain Lifestyle Amidst Financial Pressure 01:00:00 Life-Altering Decision to Start Over 01:06:00 Unexpected Encounter with the FBI 01:12:01 Confrontation and Revelation at Starbucks 01:17:32 Understanding Conspiracy Charges 01:23:12 Life Transformation After Incarceration 01:29:11 Transitioning from Teaching to Entrepreneurship Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I remember hitting seeing, I remember sending like, oh, my God, this is so much. This is so much. At that point, you're like, fuck it. I done all this. It might as well go. And when I called that system, that Sunday night and like a lot of it, like 58 something, something had come through, I was like, shit. Cherita Richardson seemed to have it all a thriving mental health agency,

a growing team and a passion for helping others, but behind the success was a storm brewing. After walking away from a stable teaching career in North Carolina to chase her dream, new regulations hit her business hard. Desperate to stay afloat, Sherita made a choice that would change her life forever, running a multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scheme. Eight years later, the FBI came knocking.

This is a story of how a respected businesswoman ended up serving nearly two years in federal prison. Trita, welcome to Locked in. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming. You came from North Carolina today. Yes, Greensboro, North Carolina. Yes.

Is that where you're from, too? Did you grow up there? I'm originally from a small town called Haralds, North Carolina. It's in between Wilmington, which is the coast and Fayetteville, which is like the military base. So it's a very, very rural area. Lots of farmland. I think there's only like a stoplight, maybe five miles down the street. So really, really small rural.

country town. What was your upbringing like? So I was born on Newton's Cross Road. Well, raised, I was born in Wilmington, raised in an area called Newton's Cross Road where pretty much my whole family lived on that street. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My mom, after my mother and my dad divorced, she came back home. And so she raised me there. My mother was a school teacher. My grandmother was a school teacher. My great-grandmother was a school teacher. And my grandfather was a farmer. He was an entrepreneur. And my mother went on to become a teacher. She was the only one that went to college. Everybody else went into business. So my grandfather owned a store at the end of the street. They had a lot of farmland. My uncle went into the trucking company. My family, which they

talk about on the show that I'm on, ended up opening up a drag strip. So we had family and in the family business or a business on the street. So, um, I swear I started my, one of my first jobs was working at a race car track. Wow. Drag strip. Um, Sundays,

I would go down. We were supposed to be at church, but eventually that took over. So my family was on Sundays down at the race track with all the cars. And I started off working in the concession stand, making hot dogs and chips. and all that stuff. And eventually, I got promoted to the tower,

which is where you put in the, there are predictions about how fast they're going to go and you kind of drop, you hit the computer to drop what we call the tree to, you know, when they're going to take off. So I grew up around my family. I'm a mother's only child. My father does have some sons,

but I was raised as the only child on the street with my family. How old? Oh, yeah. How old are you when your parents got divorced? I was actually, my mother and father separated whenever I was, she was still pregnant with me. And she came back home to her parents and stayed for a while. But then she left and went back to the city where he was because that's where the hospital was because I'm in a rural area. She was in a rural area. So that's where she went.

But then she eventually came back. So I was never in the home with both of my parents. They had already divorced. But they say this. didn't immediately get divorced because my mother was a single mom, a teacher. And she kept saying, well, I just couldn't afford it. So I think she stayed married to him like eight years after they got separated. Was your dad in the picture after they divorced? Yeah, he was in for a while. I think he was like maybe Wilmington is about where he lived about 40 minutes away. Eventually he remarried and he

had my younger brother who is actually an attorney. And so I, if he was, for a while when I was very young, I used to see him more often. As I got older, too, I just wanted to stay home and be around my friends and do stuff. So I stopped going down as much. So over the years, so I started seeing him less as frequent as I did before. Before you started working at the racetrack, did you think that your life was going to go into teaching, just like the rest of your family? You know, my parents didn't want me to be a teacher because they knew I wasn't going to make any money.

So initially, I wanted to be a dancer. I used to do pageants. I used to take dance classes. I wanted to be a dancer. And then it turned into I wanted to be a dance teacher. And then everybody was like, there's no dance teacher jobs. There's not a lot of dance teacher jobs. So then that morphed into just teach.

But then I did go. I had a short stint in law school because everybody told me, oh, you talk so well, you can argue so well. You should go be a lawyer. So I tried that. Hated it. Absolutely hated it. But I didn't teach very. long until the entrepreneur bug struck me and that's how I got into the mental health system.

Was law school right after high school? No, I was teaching at the time. So I had gone, I went to high school, went to college, then I started teaching. And then I was like, okay, yeah, they're right. This ain't enough money. I'm going to go back to law school. By that time, I was already married and started having kids and I decided I was going to go to law school. and then I got to law school, I was like, yeah, no, this is, I'm reading all this stuff. This is too boring for me. I need a little bit more excitement. And then I also needed some more money because we were young.

My husband at the time was a car salesman, not a very good one. I was a school teacher. We had three children. And, yeah, it was not easy financial issues. and so we were looking for ways to make more money for the family. And I was like, well, I'll go back and go to law school. But I had no interest in that. What were you teaching?

Kindergarten. So I went from fifth grade to fourth grade, and then I landed for most of my years in kindergarten. Is that what your mom and the rest of the family was teaching as well? Yes. My mom was a kindergarten teacher. My grandmother was preschool. So it was always the early grades.

What attracted you to teaching? at that time. So when I was little, my mom said that I would actually, I went, I was at the same school that my mother taught at. I was a student there. And in the afternoons, you know, I didn't, I didn't have to go to the bus. I had to go to my mom's classroom and wait for her to get off work. And I would just be in her classroom pretending like I was a teacher. I would be writing on a chalkboard, waiting for her to finish. And I guess I just saw it so much. And when I would come home, She said on Saturdays I would line my doll babies up and I'd just be giving lessons to the doll babies and just telling them what to do and teaching them all these lessons. My mom was also very big about reading.

Reading was, I don't want to say a punishment, but anytime I would say I'm bored, she said, you can't be bored with all these books because you can go anywhere in the world with your imagination. Go read a book. And so I was always taught, like, read and become more educated, learn more. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is endless. So that's kind of, it was all infused in me. And then I felt like once I didn't pursue dance, I knew teaching. I'd been around it all my life.

Either my mother was teaching at a school or my family, my grandmother was the, you know, Sunday school teachers. they were always teaching. So it was just kind of natural. And that's how I fell into it. Do you wish you pursued dance now looking back on it? I wish I would have opened maybe a dance studio for sure. Even now, all of my have four daughters. And they have been in cheerleading and dance for years.

And I get so much joy and have gotten so much joy watching them and watching other dancers and stuff. And I always say, like, I try to even encourage them. Like, don't y'all want to open a dance? deal, why don't y'all do this? I think a part of that is me wanting to do it. So I did end up open like an online platform, social platform around cheerleading. So I think it still pulls at me. I still love to watch it. My youngest, she likes to dance and entertain me. I just love the art and beauty of dance. So I think that was probably looking back the direction I probably should

have stayed in. How old were you when you got married and how did you? kids. I was, so I got engaged at 19. I had my first daughter at night. I had my first daughter when I was 20. And then at 21, I had my second daughter. And then the following year I got married. So I was pretty young. Was that always a part of your plans to get married that young and have kids that young? So I was, I was raised as an only child. Like I said, my dad had two other kids, but they weren't in the house with me. So I was raised, even though I was raised around my family, I was raised in a house by myself. I was always attracted to large families because I always felt very lonely because I was always by

myself. And even though my cousins were on the street, they would leave and go home with their siblings. I would leave and go home by myself. And my mom had assumed the role of being the caretaker of my grandparents because then they started getting older and started getting ill. And I was home by myself a lot. And so I was always like wanting somebody to play with and things. And so I always wanted a bigger family. I used to always say, I'm going to have a lot of kids. So they'll have people to play with. So that was always like the plan. And it was also, I think, from my generation, because you got, I'm Gen X. I'm in the generation of that's the thing you're supposed to do. Go to school, get a job, get married, get a house. Like this is the order of being proper. This is the right

American dream that you're supposed to live. So I was kind of following, following that out, did some things out of order, but go back and get married, get a house, get your education, keep getting more education so you can get a better job. Like, that's how I was raised, because in my generation, that was what we were taught was the right thing to do. What happens after law school? So after law school, again, we didn't have a lot of money. And I don't even remember how we heard my ex-husband and I heard about foster care, which falls kind of in that mental health umbrella. So we were going to do, because at this point we only had girls,

we were going to do what was called respite, where you just kept kids on the weekend when their foster parents wanted to go out of town. So we figured we already have kids here. There will be someone else for them to play with, and we wanted to foster a little boy. because we didn't have any sons. So we got to this foster care training and a girl is in there.

She's like, what are y'all doing in this training? And we were telling her, she was like, oh, y'all is so young, you should open a group home. And we were like, what is a group home? She was like, basically, it's several kids, not just one. You should open a group home. And I was like, you know, I didn't really know what it was.

but the educator in me, I'm also a student, she piqued my interest. So when we left for a few weeks, I kept like trying to read about it, searching about it online. And it just so happened that my ex-husband's cousin worked in a group home. He said, that's what he's doing. You should talk to him. So I think around Thanksgiving, we saw them at Thanksgiving. I saw his cousin at Thanksgiving. and I was like, what do you do?

And he said, I work in a group home. I'm like, okay, tell me, tell me about it. So he's telling me about it. And that's when I instantly realized, like, hold on, this isn't just a good service. But there's also a lot of funding put into this. So let's pursue. The issue was we needed a house because you had to be housed in a house. And my mom had considered buying another home.

And so she said, well, if we go to another house, you can use, my house as your group home, but it was an hour and some change away. But it was there. It was available. So I began the process of getting that home license for a mental health group home. And you and your husband at the time were running this together. Yes. We were running it together. It was called the Lawson House. We started off with four. We started off in my childhood home with four girls. We got it licensed and we were keeping females. And it's, four girls enough to produce an income? Yeah, so it's about $8,000 a month per child.

The state pays. That the state pays. But it's 24-hour care, which means you got 24-hour staff. You're responsible for their medication, making sure they get to school, anytime have appointments, therapy appointments, and you have to run a 24-hour around the clock. We got our first client one week, second client the next week. It was fairly easy. By the end of the year, we opened in October.

of that following, remember I said, we talked with him in November. By October, so we got our license that April. By October, we had gotten our first client. And then by January, we were already full. We already had the four beds filled. So four is the max you could have had? You can have more, but the way that the state works, they reduce your pay the more beds you have. So they start bringing down the amount of rate, or the per diem, which means the per day rate. So I'd realize that four was kind of your sweet spot because when you get to five, you have to bring an extra staff. And then the rate comes down so you don't get as much profit for having five as you had to do four. So that's why we stayed at the four.

So, you know, in my 20s, early 20s, mid-20s, we're making $32,000 a month on this home, which was basically my teaching salary. And what's the overhead on that? Pretty expensive. We, mostly staffing. It was mostly staffing cause because I was kind of lucky because I was in my childhood home. So I didn't have, you know, the big mortgage bills and stuff. But it's mostly staff is what really cuts into your profit margins. What kind of staff do you need in addition to you and your husband?

So, again, 24 hours around the clock. So you're doing about three staff a day unless you're working it yourself. We didn't live there. We lived an hour and a half away, hour and 15 minutes away. So we were pretty much housing staffing people Monday through Sunday, 24 hours around the clock. And then you have what they call qualified professionals who oversee the treatment plans and what you're doing. You have to pay for all the staff trainings, keeping up your license. So it is, even though you make a lot, you do spend a lot.

I don't remember exact numbers at this point because it's been so long ago. but it generates a lot, but it can quickly get out of hand with the overhead cost. Because then you're running lights. You've got to transport them. So now you've got vehicles and gas. So it's pretty... Your team is global. Your payment should be too.

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So almost like a mental health version of home health care where someone goes in the home. And with that, now you're unlimited because you're not bound by the number of beds that you're licensed. for. So now I could get, I had unlimited clients. We were back home in this rural area. There weren't any other, there was a few providers, but not a lot of providers at the point doing this. So the market wasn't, it wasn't a lot of competition. We had great relationships from doing the group homes. And from there, I began opening offices and sending the individuals into the homes because that was like a step before they came to the group home. You were trying to keep them at home. So you're sending these community support workers into the home to work with the,

with the kids there and do treatment with them so they can stay at home. And I think I grew that one to nine offices and 117 staff members. Do you think you're driven by the money or by the care for the kids? Both. It was both. I mean, I'm driven by just things growing because I'm not really like a person that spends a lot and does a lot. Money doesn't necessarily move me. And it's kind of funny, I'm more excited by the growth. Like, can I do it? How big can I get it? Money is the measure of it, but that's not the only part. And we were also able to do a lot of good things in the community because we were in a very rural area that there weren't a lot of jobs. So we were in our hometown employing over 100 people, family members, and it paid decent compared to what was going on in that

area because down there was a lot of factories, people working in factories. And so not that that's a bad thing, but they certainly enjoyed being out in the community and on their own time because they could set their own schedules as long as it lined up with their client. So it was more for me about the achievement and the growth. like, okay, here I am coming from being a classroom teacher to having 117 employees. That was the reward. I remember we used to do payroll on Fridays.

And I remember one time it was at 2 o'clock was the paycheck. That's what time the staff would come pick their checks up. And I remember coming down the street and the line was down the street. Like the people were waiting to pick up their checks. And that made me feel so good to know that I had created something that so many people were going to go home that day and be able to feed their families. And they were going to be able to do things for their kids. So it wasn't just about the money, but it was about what we were able to do in that small town because that was a big deal. How was your lifestyle as you started to make more money?

As I started to make more money, I started to buy more stuff. But I also, my family had grown too. And so we didn't immediately go out and like we did buy a new house, which was a pretty big purchase for us. But we also had three daughters. And my parents were coming back and forth, staying with us because we worked a lot. We did buy a couple of luxury cars, like two, but it wasn't like we had a fleet. It was, it was reasonable. And so we moved about 10.

minutes from where we had our first home and we built our dream house and we stayed there for several years. But at this point, the business had been pretty solid for about five or six years. How old were you when things start to take a turn in the business? So the state of North Carolina, the state of North Carolina came in with new regulatory changes. And basically those changes required that you double up your staff. They call it double staffing. So now, Now, whereas I had one person working on the first shift, now I have two. So my staff, my payroll instantly doubles. That is a huge cut into your profit margins to have to double down your staff.

They also started requiring that you have a doctor and these therapists. It was just a heavy, heavy payroll pool. So I was early 30s, maybe 32, 33, somewhere in there. And it has started, like, being harder to make a profit because we had so much overhead at this point with that staff, with the staff. And after a while, when the state made changes, they also wanted you to become nationally accredited, which was a huge bill to not just get the accreditation to keep the accreditation and hire consultants to come in. It was just one thing after the next. It was like, who moved my cheese? You can never keep up with what the state wanted.

I think at that point they had realized that they had opened the floodgates because now these mental health agencies are popping up everywhere. Everybody's got one and everybody's making a lot of money. And it was getting out of control. So the state put in regulations to stop it. And quite frankly, a lot of the individuals who were in the industry or coming in were minorities. And suddenly they were going to reduce that provider pool down. And that looked like increasing the amount of requirements to make it more expensive and harder to run. And also more difficult to even find people who were qualified to do what you needed them to do.

You know, need accreditations, just a whole gamut of stuff that I was like, this ain't working. Financial problems come. Business is failing. Marriage starts failing. It was like things just started falling off. What kind of kids were housed in these facilities? So we were around, I think they started at age eight and went up to like 18, and they had been diagnosed with some type of mental health diagnosis. It could be ADHD, opposition to fine disorder, anything that the doctor and the therapist or psychiatrists had given them a diagnosis because you need that diagnosis to build the insurance company.

because we were funded by Medicaid. That's who pays. But they also had to have a history of failed service attempts with other less intense services. So have they already had the community support service? Have they had an intensive in home? Have they been in therapy? Did you take them to level two?

They've stepped up at this point. A lot of them have been involved with the juvenile justice system. Some of them were coming from psychiatric hospitals. they needed a higher level of care. Right before the business starts to take a turn, how would you have described yourself as a person? That's a good question. I was always, I think I've always, in some ways,

suffered from a little bit of imposter syndrome, so a little uncertain because it was almost like it was too good to be true. Like, this happened too easy. Like, is this real? Like, did I do this? Like, how did this thing go from here to here so quickly? and I always felt a little unsure. And so even though I've always been told that I was very smart, not very confident and not

confident that I can maintain it. Like, I got it here, but can it stay? So I always was a little apprehensive. I think from the outside, people probably had the perception that I'm like, oh, this boss and I'm doing all this stuff. But deep inside, a little insecure about, like, my. ability to keep this going. And I don't want to disappoint people. And this thing is, you know, in this small town, this is a big, this is big. And we're taking on a lot of responsibilities.

We've got people with jobs. We got our family. And I was a little fearful that I wasn't going to be able to keep it. So deep inside, a little very insecure about my ability. And was I smart enough or was this just a fluke? Did I get lucky? Was that perception people had of you in quarantine to you? I don't think so. I think people always, I've always been told that I was smart. Everybody always, she's smart, she's smart. And, but as a young child, I was very talkative.

I used to always getting trouble for talking. But I was a leader, too, in high school, going back to high school, you know, I was in student government. I was in peddice. I was always doing things. I was always an achiever. It was performance base. If I perform and I look like I'm doing things,

that are good, then I'm going to be perceived as being good. If I achieve and I get certain degrees and accolades, then that's the measure of my worthiness. But I didn't necessarily feel that way deep inside, but that was the drive. Because I went through a little period when I was around 16 of being a little defiant too. And so my way to redeem myself from that defiant era

was to go back and be an overachiever. and make up for my wrongs. You know, like, redeem yourself. And I'll be honest, like, and I know I'm probably jumping a little bit. I'm even careful with myself now that I don't operate from a place of feeling like I have to redeem myself from prison, not for anybody else. My redemption is for myself. So I'm even hesitant about, like, I'm always checking myself now, like, why are you doing what you do?

Are you doing it because you want people to think that you're, good or that you're right and your wrongs. I don't owe anybody anything but myself. And that took a long time for me to get there because I operated in that way for such a long time as a young child. And so I'm very careful. I'm careful with me to make sure that the way that I'm moving is because that's who I truly am and what I want. Once the regulations started to come down on you and everything got changed up, how long did it take to feel the financial distress from that? Oh, it was immediately. us like a very short window to get this stuff done like maybe like six months to a year and I had already when I was reading it I could already knew the writing was on the wall you know because you

can see it like I'm like I know where we are now how are we going to manage having doubled staff how are we going to manage paying a psychiatrist and a therapist it's the money's not there and they're not increasing the rate they're only putting on more requirements but they're not increasing our pay rate. So I already knew as it was going towards that that there was no way we were going to survive. But we had a big ship. I always called the business the Titanic.

And I was like, it's a big Titanic, and we don't have a life raft. And that's the iceberg. These regulations are an iceberg, and we can't turn fast. There's nothing to do, but we've got to sell this. We got to find a company that is bigger than us, that may have more resources, that may have more staff, and maybe they can assume us. That was a very popular thing.

When the regulations came out, the big boys came in and swooped up all the smaller people like myself. Were you able to find that person? I was able to find that person. I was able to find that company. So I thought. What happened?

So I went on to, they assumed the business, mainly the part, the community part, where we were sending the people out, right? Because at that point, you had so much more volume than you had with the group homes. Because the group homes are capped by the number of beds you have, and then you have a lot of overhead. But with the community services, it's endless. You know, you just got to find enough workers to go out with those clients. So this company came in and took over, and I want to say they kept, baby, three to five of the staff that we had because they already had a lot of their own people.

So they kept like the girl who did our billing who was submitting our claims. They also kept like the person who was our QAQI person. And they kept a few other people. But other than that, they had their own staff. They just really wanted to basically buy our book of clients is what they really wanted. They wanted the clients. So I stayed on. with them as a consultant because at this point I had transitioned into doing consulting for other

mental health agencies who were trying to get their accreditation because I actually got our company accredited. So I was going to help them open up more. I was going to help them grow and expand into different areas. And a few months in to me opening this new office for them, maybe about an hour and a half away, they kept like really pressuring me to have, to get a lot of clients. And I just knew you can't build it that fast. Like, that's not, there's a process to this. Like, I can't go from zero to a hundred overnight. That's, there's no one, even in this city that has that many clients in this service. And it was strange, but I didn't understand at the time what was going on. So time went by.

and the owner that I had sold the company to, we fell out. It was just unrealistic. Again, I'm not picking up what's going on. This is the first time, this is the first time that I realized that you could scam the system. So I move on and just start doing consulting with different companies across the areas, just doing national accreditation. I had built a decent consultant company doing that. I'm good. I get a call from one of my former employees.

and she's just sounding like sad. You know, and she's like, when is the next time you're going to be in the area? And I was like, you know, I'll be up here this week. Sometimes she was like, I want to go out to dinner. So I met her at the mall and we're talking. I don't know if I can cuss on this podcast or not. So we're talking.

We go to this Japanese restaurant and she's like, they got me fucked up. And I said, what are you talking about? And she's like, I'm under a federal investment. investigation. And I was like, for what? She was like, you know, we were billing this stuff and da-da-da-da. And at that point, it all started making sense. Ah, this is why they were telling me to get these clients so quick. He would never directly tell me what to do. It was just that do it by any means necessary. But at that point, I didn't know what any means necessarily meant. I didn't know

what that meant because I didn't know you could scam it because I had been doing things very much about a book. So I didn't understand. And honestly, after I sold the company and they grew so quickly, right, it made no sense to me because I'm relatively smart and I've run these numbers and I know this area. how the hell are they getting this big this quick so it made me start doubting myself as a business person i'm like now i think i'm pretty smart how could i not figure out this code and they come in and take my company essentially a part of it and just put it on steroids this doesn't make sense i know those rules so that day that i was in the restaurant with her with my old staff and she's like yeah we're in the federal investigation and i'm like for what

She's like, because they're fraudulently billing. And I'm like, how were you doing that? And when she told me what they had done, I was like, fuck. That's why the only kind of way like, honestly, the state had almost set it up because it was almost impossible to make a profit unless you were doing something a little illegal, especially for a small company. So then the pieces started coming together for me. Like, okay, they became like, the, you know, they became like,

the 15th largest company in the state. And I just couldn't understand how they had these thousands of clients all of a sudden. But they ended. They, that was the first time that I heard about anybody being indicted for Medicaid fraud. So what was the process they were doing that she explained to you? So what they were doing was, okay. So if you have Medicaid, right, normally is Medicaid eligibility is based on income. So if you start thinking about where would a pool of individuals be that are low income?

What other needs may they have? They may need electricity bills paid. They may need food. They may need clothing. They may need shelter. They may have other things going on. They may be getting evicted. So if I'm looking at individuals who may meet that criteria, now I need to create something that I can,

can draw them in. So they had a food bank. So they put a food bank next to the mental health company and started opening it up to get free food. So when they would come get the free food, they would say, hey, we have these services and we can also assist you with your electricity. We can also do these things. Give us your information. And all you need to build the insurance, to be honest, is a birthday, a Medicaid number and a name. That's the only thing you need. I got those things I can go build. If I have a number, I can build your Medicaid.

That's all I need. So when they're coming to get their food, they're doing an intake on them right there in line. Here's your bag of food. Go ahead. I'm just drawing clients to me. Now I don't have to go out market. Now I don't have to go to doctors offices and schools and stuff.

I'm bringing them right to me every week. So that's what they were doing was pulling in a lot of these individuals. And technically that's unethical because it's your recruiting kind of, you can't recruit for insurance. You're not supposed to recruit. You're not supposed to recruit. You can get referrals, but you can't recruit. So there's a little thin gray line that a lot of providers. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance.

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Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Total line. So did it become more than just kids for the mental health? Oh, yeah. Kids, adults, anybody that had a medic. At this point, the community services were open to children and adults. Anybody could get it. And that was allowed? That was allowed. You just specifically stuck the children. I specifically stuck the children. I was mainly children. But whenever we started doing the community services, I did open up and start doing adults as well, but mainly children. So when you got bought out, were you financially better? Did you get like a lump sum? So I got a lump sum, but then I also took the consulting position.

So I had like a lump sum of money, and then I had the money that I was making from consulting with them on like a monthly basis. I think I was getting something like $10,000 or $12,000 a month to be their consultant. Plus I had the buyout. So things were good. Things were decent. You could have walked into the sunset. Yes. What happens?

We fell out because he wanted me to. I wasn't bringing clients in fast enough, but I didn't know how to bring in clients fast enough because I didn't know you could do that. So then when we fell out, it was like, what am I supposed to do? Well, I'm going to keep consulting. So when I started consulting, that's when I met my daughter's father. And how does he come into the picture? So he had an agency and he wanted to get accredited. So I was hired to come in to get accredited, to get them accredited.

So at this point, I had gotten so good at the accreditation. I actually took a job with the accreditation company to be a consultant for the accreditation company. So they trained me to be the auditor. So that just helped my credibility because they're like, oh, she works for the company. She's one of the contractors that actually comes out and does the review. So I knew it upside down. I had systemized it. I had everything together. I had the forms I had the policies. It was a turnkey. $30,000, I'll come in and get you accredited. And I'm turning them out over and over and over again because the state required that you have it. So it was an easy sale. So my name started circulating in the industry and people just started

hiring me to come to their company and get them accredited. And he was one of the companies. Now, when you talk to your friend that was being investigated or the old employee that was being investigated by the FBI, did the FBI ever reach out to you at all? No. Okay. So they probably saw that you had sold the company and you weren't a part of it. I didn't know anything about it until, by the time that she talked to me, I don't think, I don't think at that point, you know, I didn't understand the process of federal investigations as well as I obviously do now. I want to say it sounded like from what I can't remember,

she was just in the beginning stages of maybe negotiating her plea, that she was in the middle, like it was already that far. They were getting ready to, you know, bring down indictments. she knew she was probably going to go, she was pretty sure at that meeting that she was going to go do some time. She was trying to get her, she was trying to plea off some of the other charges.

How old are you when you meet this new guy? So, Vanessa's 12, like 34. And you're divorced now from the guy that you started? In the middle. We're separated. Okay. I'm in the middle of getting a divorce and he's also in the middle of getting a divorce. So we both are separated from our spouses

going through divorces. So that is how we started talking on a personal note. At first, it was just talking about the accreditation. It was talking about business stuff. And then it started talking about personal because it's a lot of work to get a company accredited. And so sometimes I'm working late at night. I'm making phone calls. I'm sending you messages.

I'm asking you questions. I'm sending texts asking for certain things because I work weekends nights. And then I think one night I message him and it was late. And he's like, why are you home on a Friday night, like working on this stuff? And I was like, well, I ain't got nothing else to do. He was like, where's your husband? And I was like, I'm in the middle of separation. He was like, yeah, I am too.

And then that's how the personal relationship started. When do you guys decide to get in the business together? So I was traveling a lot doing a lot of these consulting things. And I remember, like, complaining to him one time, like, I am tired of doing all this traveling. Like, I'm getting tired. I need to find one company that I can just do their stuff. And he was like, come do it for my company.

I want to expand. I want to go to these different states. At this point, other states had allowed provided, they had similar services. People already knew that they could go to Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina. They had already started finding other states that you could go do the exact same thing. And so they were moving, and that's what he wanted to do. So I was like, oh, I know how to do this.

in my sleep, I'll just, if this will keep me in one place and not going all across the state, I'll just come work there. And then that's how I just started focusing on the one company. And do you become a partner in this business with him? So the first company, whenever I got there, he was already up and running. But it wasn't large at the time. I think he had made like $100,000. And for the agencies that, what we, that's not a lot. for this type of agency. Like you go, it goes pretty quickly. So when I first got there, I was just trying to get him ready to go through the accreditation.

And the records were just unorganized. Let me say it that way. I just thought they were unorganized. It was just stuff all over the place. There were no systems. And when you go through an accreditation review, they're looking for certain stuff. So initially, I was just going in trying to get everything together, making sure the policies are there, making sure the staff records, making sure everything is okay.

So when the auditors come in or the reviewers come in, you're going to have everything in place. So he had already had that company going. And then from there, we opened up another company down the road, and that's the one that I was a partner in. But I was never a partner in the first company. Now, was he doing everything legitimate when you met him? At first, I thought he was. I think for the, I'm going to say, honestly, 80%, 80%. It's, and even now, people, I call it fluffing.

They fluff their billing. Like, and what I mean by that, or they pad it called, they pad the billing. So if I'm a therapist and we have a 45-minute session, I bill it like it's an hour. If you come in for 30 minutes, I bill it like it's 45 minutes. Maybe let's say you have, you come in one time a week, I bill for two. If you go to the doctor and you know at the end they circle the sheet and tell you all the stuff and go take it to the checkout, if you ever watch what they're checking off, I've been sometimes and there's things that they check off it, I know they didn't do. They're pumping the billing up because that's- Yeah, it's like corporate attorneys. Yes, it's the same thing. And so he was fluffing a little bit. He was padding it up, but that's not unheard of. That's not completely,

egregious. Like, that's kind of an industry thing a little bit, and people do it at different levels, but it's not uncommon. So what happens once you guys get into business together? So I'm working exclusively with them and him at this point, but I'm not making as much money as I was consulting, but I also wasn't running all over the place. And I remember one night telling him, I was like, yeah, this is nice working with you, but this is not enough money. Like this is just not, this ain't going to cut it. Like, I can't live off of this. And he was like, well, I can't pay you more doing what we're doing now.

Like, I'd have to make more. I'd have to make more. And so I'm like, okay, let's get more clients and let's do this and let's do this. He was like, yeah, you know, but or you could just bump the billing up. And I was like, what do you mean? You know, I'm so naive. I'm still so stupid looking back. I'm like, what do you mean?

pumped the bill he's like you notice what people be doing and then that's when it started all coming together and i'm thinking about the conversation with my friend at the dinner that day and now i'm thinking about this and i'm like oh this shit is common i'm the only idiot that wouldn't do in it everybody this is common knowledge this is what y'all've been doing it's like everybody do this and i'm like seriously it's like how do you think everybody's staying in business and i'm like okay so talk tell me more tell me more about it And so he starts kind of telling me, because he was doing a slightly different service. It was outpatient services.

And so he starts telling me, you know, this is how you get, if without patient, you get a certain number of services without needing authorization. You could just build those and not have anything. You don't need any kind of authorization to do it. You can just do it. And so I looked at kind of the system and I started studying the rules. And that's when I figured out, like, hold on, I think we can do this. Let me, but it got, it has to look real.

You can't do what the other person was trying to get me to do, go from zero to 60 overnight, right? This is, this got to be a gradual bill. Like, you don't go from having one client to 100 in a week. That doesn't, when you send that into the Medicaid system, because you got to remember, all this stuff is electronically built. It's all in the system. You're keying. and you go one week from making X to making this, that's going to look strange.

Like, how did you get all those clients that fast? And so that's when I started thinking, like, how can we make this look not so out of control? So let's just do a little bit. Let's just add a little bit and see what's going to happen. And is it going to work? And it did. So what was your exact plan?

Walk us through that. So my exact plan was like, okay, just hypothetical numbers. If we start off and you're billing $6,000 a week, next week, let's build eight. The next week, let's build $9,500, the next week. Let's build 10. Let's gradually grow this so it looks like we're growing a business, not that someone just came in here and dumped 100 clients through the door.

Let's build it up a little bit more. Let's also make sure that if we get audited, we have the paperwork to support what we said that we did. So as I'm billing this, I also have to make sure the documentation matches what we said we billed. Because early on in the business, he had gotten what they call a review on audit. And when the auditors came in, they saw that everything wasn't there. Everything that they said they billed didn't have. And it wasn't that they didn't have documentation.

Let me say that because the documentation was there. but you can also be dinged because the documentation isn't good. So if I don't put a Medicaid number on the top of the paper, it's not billable. If there's no doubt the signature, it's not billable. If the codes don't match, it's a payback. You have to pay it back. So the paperwork, you get, so it's almost like the government pays you up front, then they come and audit you and take it back.

So I always say it's like living on a loan because they can come back and get it whenever they want. So you got to cover your tracks. So not only can I not go from zero to 100 overnight because I can't document the many files that quick. So you got to give me time to make sure everything looks legit because if they come in here tomorrow, I got to be able to show them a file that's going to pass and we not have to give the money back. So my plan was build it up slowly. Let's keep documenting. Keep seeing the clients. Just pad up their stuff, add a little bit more, and just coast.

a little bit. Now, this is different from your first business where there was an actual cap on the billing where this you can just keep saying you're doing more hours. Yes. It wasn't like you can only make $8,000 a month for this client. So in the group home business, they're either in that bed at midnight or they're not. And you're going to get one set rate. That's it.

It's a set amount. How many every days are there? That's it, period. You really can't. You could, but that's almost ridiculous because if someone's not in your house, and there's somewhere else. That's a lot easier to prove than me saying I went out somewhere for 10 minutes versus 30. That's a lot easier to do it whenever it's out in the community or people coming into your office.

So you don't need actual different Medicaid numbers. You have legitimate Medicaid numbers from legitimate clients. You're just fluffing how much services you're given to them. At first. At first. Okay. So what happens next? So greed kicks in.

and we need more clients. The only way to get more billing is to bring in more clients. How do you get more clients? We've got to get them from somewhere. And in the industry we have what's called like recruiters. These are basically marketers that go into low-income communities

or go places that they believe there's a high concentration of individuals at Medicaid and they start offering them things and making promises to get them to come into your office to become one of your clients. So that's the first thing is get some recruiters. So there were some individuals that would go out in the community, that would find people, they would come back,

and then we had a new book of clients. So now we're able to keep them recruiting. Sometimes the recruiters charge per person. Sometimes they want a percentage of your billing. And are these people actually using the mental health services, or are they just showing up? showing up one time, get an assessment, sometimes you don't see them. Also, we would also have a huge population of non-English-speaking clients.

So they were a lot less risky because if an auditor came in their house, they're not going to talk to them. So you also want to target those kind of communities too because they're a lot less. They don't know necessarily how to read the English for the insurance stuff. So they're a better client to have on your books. And what was their incentive to show up? Because at the last place, they were offering the free food, what were these people? Gas cards, $25, pay and beat, like, just different stuff. And sometimes they just didn't know.

They thought they were going to get some services. Sometimes people also say, I have an after-school program. Your kids can come after-school so you feel like you're getting free after-school care. But really, we're billing your Medicaid. Now, is Medicaid the only victim here, or are these clients have to pay an extra co-pay? Well, what is the damage done to these individuals? The only, it's a straight Medicaid billable service. There's nothing charged to them.

You can ask for a co-pay, but we didn't. We didn't need it. Now, how much money are you making when you start doing this illegal billing? Like I said, we started off around 6,000 to 8,000. I can't remember exactly. But I remember, you know, the first time I started billing it, I just gradually started increasing it, just gradually started, you know, doing a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.

And the first time that I realized that I had gotten out of control, my bill was like $60,000 in a week. And you have to have your billing in by Thursday. It cuts off on Thursday. So if you put it in Friday, you got to wait for the next week. When you put it in on that Thursday, they pay you direct deposit on the following Tuesday. So you got Thursday you put it in, Tuesday you're paid. It's a fast turnaround. But on Sunday nights, at that time, you could call into the automatic system and it'll say, put your provider number in.

And it'll say your payout is. And it'll tell you how much is going to be deposited on Thursday. So the first time I did it, because you don't know when you put it in. And that's how they came up with the intended loss. How much did you submit? But then how much actually got paid? because if you got a number wrong, if you got the birthday off, if you misspelled a name, maybe you bill for five sessions and they only have four left, like all those things can

kick the billing back. So I remember, you know, I used to remember Sunday nights just waiting for the system to update so I could call it and see how much is going to be deposited on Tuesday. And I just remember that first time, that like that the one time I put in this bill was like 60,000 and I remember hitting seeing, I remember sending like, oh my God, this is so much. This is so much. But at that point, you're like, fuck it. I done all this.

It might as well go. And when I called that system that Sunday night and like a lot of it, like 58 something, something had come through, I was like, I fucked up. This is too far. And then at that point, I'm in the deep end. let it roll. Where do you think your greed stem from? I think my greed stem from the need to be seen as successful. Because you remember, I had gotten a divorce.

And I had this large home. I had these girls. I had built a lifestyle. I didn't want to fail. I didn't want it to look like I had already lost the husband. I had already lost this other business. I got to redeem myself. I can't look like.

a failure. I got to hold on. Now I have three children that I've created a lifestyle for them. They're involved in sports and they're used to being in a certain house and being able to do things. I don't want to disappoint them. I've already taken their dad away. They already had to make that adjustment. I don't want to take their whole lifestyle away. I don't want them to stop going to cheer. I don't want them to have to move out of their house. I got to keep this stuff in place. So I don't want to look like I fail. I've been trained my whole life to win. I've been trained my whole life. I cannot not be good enough, you know? And so it was just trying to hold on. And it wasn't about the stuff for me. It was more about how I was perceived.

That was what was important. I want to be perceived as I didn't fail. You know, I'm still winning. And so at this point, I got bills. I got this house. I now have this house here by myself. I have everything associated with it. I have the cars. I got kids in school. They got school clothes.

I got da-da-da-da-da. I got to pay for it. What am I going to do? I can't go back to the classroom. That ain't going to cut it. I can't. At this point, the state had given everybody a certain amount of time. You've got to be accredited by this time.

There's no more accredited. everybody's accredited because they only gave them two years to get it done. That was a nice two-year run. So what do I do? I see an opportunity to maintain and I stay on it. That moment that you were describing a little while ago about, you thought you went too far when it was a $60,000 bill. Right.

Did you quit right after that? No. No. Why do you think you thought that but still continued to go forward? Why did I think I went too far, but I'm going to keep going? Because even though you bill it, you still have to pay people to come in and recruit more clients. You got to give the people a percentage. You still got to pay the staff that you're actually working. So even though I billed the 60, I wasn't going to keep all of it because I still

got to maintain the offices. I got to do stuff. The next month, I'm still going to have more bills come in. So I got to keep going. How am I going to stop? Because if I stop it, then I'm right back where I was before we even started. So I got to keep it up. This is a maintenance. I'm on maintenance mode. I'm in survival mode right now. I'm surviving.

I'm not even thinking. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to survive. How long does this go on for? That's the craziest part. Sometimes I think about it, I'd be like, I got in all this trouble and it won't eat that long. It was like, I think the whole thing was a year and a half.

It wasn't even two years. And how much money was illegally billed? So according to Medicaid, because, you know, they look at what you build. Okay, so I was involved in two companies. The first company that he already had when I got there and then the new company that we formed together. Then when I left, so then we'll get to the breakup, right? So if we want to just deal with those two companies, those two companies were around, four million, just those two.

And illegal billings. Well, they consider all of it illegal because when they came back for the investigation, we didn't give them anything. So they just said, well, it's all illegal. When that's not true, because when we first started, some of it was real. But at this point,

how do I catch up this amount of fraudulent billing to even justify what's real and what's not? I'm putting myself at a risk showing you anything. So we just ain't going to show you nothing. Because if I show it to you and you see that I forge the signature, that's a charge, right? If you're going to get me on identity theft, if I show you these papers.

So it's just better not to show it. I'm not going to put up anything because I don't want to expose myself. So it's better for me not to even just say I don't have the records, which is essentially what happened. So things are going good. It goes on for a year and a half. What happens? So I ended up getting pregnant with my daughter, with my youngest daughter. And her dad and I started, everything was starting to fall apart because it's the pressure of trying to keep up with all of this stuff.

Because, again, not only are you keeping up with the billing, you got to keep up with the documentation and the staff. So my way out, because this is how the second business came, is I don't want to have anything else to do with mental health. I'm done. I'm so tired. It's so stressful. I want to open up a daycare. That was my thing. I'm going back to my teaching.

I'm going back into what I know. So let me open this daycare, which is how the second business got started. So I opened up this hourly daycare center and we was outfitted very, very nice, all of it using the Medicaid money that we had made from the first business. and that was going to be my transition out. I'm going to go run this daycare. But again, if I have an LLC and the EIN, I can go back and apply for another Medicaid number. So in the initial time of the daycare opening, it wasn't generating a lot of money. So let's put a Medicaid number on it and build Medicaid under the daycare.

So that's what we did. So as he and I started going our separate ways, I had found out that he was being unfaithful. And I'm like, I'm leaving. I'm done. I'm done with all of this. I'm done with you. You know, we out here, you got me.

Well, you ain't got me doing none. I was doing it myself. But we're out here doing all this stuff. You over here doing this. I'm done. I'm done. I'm going to pack up and I'm leaving the whole city. I'm leaving this house.

It ain't worth it no more. I didn't dug myself into this whole. I got all this liability on me, another child. you know, this is crazy. I'm out. And it literally was like, I'm out. And I literally called the realtor one day and I said, get rid of this house. I'm leaving.

I had a neighbor that lived across the street from me. She had just gotten her degree and she was so ecstatic and she was telling me about, you know, she had gotten this PhD and she was talking about this program. And I was like, there's my out. Because again, go get education. Go get education. back to school and I'm a I'm gonna get another degree and I'm just gonna start over and I'm gonna go get me I'm gonna go back and get a regular job I'm gonna walk away from this shit it ain't worth it no

more it's I'm taking a toll on me mentally I sold the house packed up and moved to another city stop starting over I went back to school got a PhD I left left everything there he's he's calling me, asked me what you want to do with this. I don't give a down what you do with it. Burn it. I don't, don't call me about it. Don't talk to me about it. I don't want nothing to do with anything that's going on. I'm out. And that was pretty much so crazy. I remember him calling. They literally had the whole daycare whenever they shut it down, just piled up in the middle of the parking lot where they had gone in and just ripped all the stuff out, taking all the stuff out. staff was calling me, where are you?

Don't come out, I'm gone. This is the FBI? No, the FBI hadn't even come into the picture at this point. This is just the stat. This is where, when I walked away, and they let the daycare part go. And so when they close the daycare, you know, everything. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator.

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So it's always easy to save big every day with savings and rewards. Ralph's SoCal for over 150 years. Savings may vary by state. Fuel restrictions apply. Seasite for details. I think that I had in there was just thrown out into the park a lot. So how much time then passes from the time you leave to the time the FBI comes knocking? So I am very certain about when I left.

And how I know when I left was because I remember the argument, what the argument was about. And the argument was about my birthday because he had forgotten my birthday. And I was mad. He didn't tell me happy birthday. And it was so disrespectful. Like, you don't remember my birthday? And I just remember like, I'm up here doing all this for somebody that don't even remember my birthday. Okay, treat it.

Get yourself of steam out to gutter leave. So I was very clear about when the breakup had happened because I knew the incident. That would have been, I had my daughter in 23. I had her in the early part of, I had her in July. My birthday was in November. I was getting ready to be out at six months. So she's about five, six months older this time. I left and went back to school.

I went to school that August. whenever in 2018, so that was 2013 when she was born when I left, it wasn't until 2018 that the SBI came.

It wasn't until 2020 that the FBI came. It was seven years after I left. What's the statute of limitations on that? 10.

10. I was right at it. And every year I would count. Every year. I just remember every year like, okay, one year down.

One year down. One year down. I'm like, I'm getting close. I'm getting close. And I left in 24. Now, the indict, my paperwork says until 26, because that's how, or until 26, 27, because that's how long he kept going after I left. So I left in 20, the late part of 2013, 2014, it keeps going into 2016, 2017.

So three to four years later. But I didn't know it was still going because I thought, And I left and took everything with me, and you're not going to be able to do this without me. You're going to lose it all because I'm leaving you. And you can't do this without me. You're right. What were you doing when you left in between the time the FBI? I went back to school.

I became a professor. I got remarried. I was rebuilding. I was just going to just restart my whole life and put all that behind me. And pray to God that the FBI wasn't going to show up. Did your husband or your new husband have any idea? No. I didn't tell him anything about it. He knew that I had worked in that industry. He knew that I had a breakup, but I didn't share any of that stuff until I got approached by the FBI. Tell us about that. So the world was shutting down because of COVID, 2022. And at this point, I was working in a new job. I was working at the college. And my daughter and I had started an event company.

And I remember getting ready to go to the mall one day to meet somebody to give them. She had rented something from us for a party. And I was getting it back. And she said, I'm going to the mall. So can you meet me at the mall? And I said, yeah, I'll come up to the mall. So I went into the mall that day, met her, picked up whatever it was, took it back to my car. I get back to my car and I'm like, you know, I'm hungry.

I'm going to go back into the pavilion and at our mall the pavilion is up on the third floor. I go up, I get my stuff, and I'm coming down to escalator, and I see my favorite store, which was H&M. So I'm going H&M, and I'm going to shop a little bit. And I'm on the telephone talking to one of my friends. And in our mall, there's a lot of people that sell, like,

incense and scented oils and, like, shoe cleaners and all that stuff. And they're always, like, trying to stop you. like trying to sell you something. So I remember coming out of H&M and someone's like, miss, miss. And I'm like, I'm talking on the phone and I'm like, I don't want it. I'm not even looking at him.

And he's like, miss, miss, and I'm like, I don't want it. And he kept saying like, miss. And I finally said, I said I don't want it. And I looked up and it's a white man. And he jumps in front of me. He gets in front of me. He was like, ho, ho, ho, ho.

And I'm like, damn, you agree. I'm like, so I'm talking my friend. I said, hold on for this. Hold on, let me call you right back. And I was like, I'm good. I don't want anything. And he pulls out of this thing. He said, no, ma'am, I'm somebody from the FBI.

I'm in the middle of them all. And I'm like, okay, and this is crazy. This is the craziest thing ever. But in the moment, you know how on the movies when somebody gets killed and the police come to tell you that somebody died? I don't know why that was the first thing that came to my head. I was like, oh, God, somebody got hurt. like somebody's like something happened.

And he was like, he says, you know, are you Shereida? And I said, yeah. And he was like, okay. He was like, come on with me. Come on with me. And I'm like, I'm standing like sick. He's like, no, no, no. He was like, it's okay.

Just calm down because he could see it. I'm getting, I'm like, what's, I'm, and so I say, what's going on? Like, what's going on? Because I'm starting to think, I don't know why I thought he was getting ready to tell me something. I'm not registered FBI. police and all this stuff. And he says, do you know Antonio? And I said, that's my daughter's father. I'm thinking he's getting ready to tell me something happened to him. He said, oh, I know that. And that's when I was like, oh, shit. And I was like, and he said, but I think you know a little bit

more. And I said, what's this about? And he said, just walk out and I won't embarrass you. And I said, okay? And so by this point, we're almost at the door, at, like, the exit out of the mall. And he's like, just keep walking. He was like, I won't embarrass you. Just keep walking. And I walk out and come outside and I look over, and they're the marshals. Oh, so they were already ready to arrest you and everything?

It was ready. Wow. So there's no talking your way out of this one. And at first, he asked me, he was, as we were walking, he was like, so do you know this company? And I was like, no. And then I remember my attorney was like, why did you lie? He was like, you lied to the FBI. I was like, I didn't.

I just said no. He was like, do you know to come? I was like, no. I was like, I don't know anything. I hadn't been there seven years. I don't even, I don't know nothing. Like I was going. And my attorney was like, you can't lie.

You just don't say nothing. That was later on. He was like, oh, my God, they're going to kill you for like lying. He just had me all crazy. And I remember just, Like in that moment, again, this is right at the top of COVID. So the world is getting ready to shut down. And now I'm in the middle of an investigation.

The world is shutting down. And that just starts like everything gets delayed. I can't get to court. Like it just started a whole cycle and I'm caught up in it like, what the hell? I'm stuck in my house. I don't know what's getting ready to happen. So they give you bail after they arrested? They gave me, they let me go.

They subpoenaed me and they said they wanted all of my records. But again, I don't have nothing. I ain't been there seven years. I don't know what you want. So I immediately call my friend because at this point she's out. She's already back out. She went to prison and went to prison. She did a year and the day and she's out.

So I call her and I'm like, who was your attorney? And she's like, what? And I was like, who was your attorney? And she was like, what are you talking about? I was like, who was your attorney? And she's like, she tells me the name of her attorney. She was like, why? I was like the FBI and she was like, fuck.

She thought it was because of the company that they were coming back for then, like for the company that I had sold because they were still hitting up people from their case. Like people were still getting him. Like there were people that still hadn't been sentenced off their chain of events. So I was like, where are you at? And she was like, she was at the time she had just got out. She was cleaning buildings. And I said, I'm coming to where you are.

I'm like, I'm on my way. So on my way there, I call my daughter's dad. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm in some doing something. And I was like, he's like, what's wrong with you? Now, at this point, I'm married. I got a family. I got everything.

And I was like, where are you? And he's like, what, you're scaring me? What's wrong? And I said, do you remember that place that we used to go to all the time? Like, I forgot. He was like, yeah, I was like, you remember that place? And he was like, yeah, I said, go to that place. Because I didn't know, I'm thinking they're tracking.

I don't know what the hell they're doing. And so he goes and it ended up, it used to be this Mexican restaurant that we used to go eat at. And I'm like, go there. And I get there before him and I park in the parking lot. So I see him coming up. So at this point, he's already, he knows something. Like, he knows I'm getting ready to probably drop a bomb on.

So I see him circling through the parking lot. He just keeps circling. So I finally get out of my car and start walking towards the restaurant, but I don't go in the restaurant. I go into the Starbucks beside it. And I go into Starbucks and sit down. I'm like, is he going to come in? And he finally walks in.

And he sits down in front of me. And he said, what is it? I said, I got a visit. He's like, from who? I said, who you think? and he said he just looks I said what do you what you've been doing

because I don't know I thought you stopped I thought it stopped and he says what are you talking about and I said what have you been doing and he was like I'm not doing anything

and I was like well according to my subpoena there's a whole lot of billing it's been going on I said I don't have any of the records because I've not been there he said they asked about me. I said, you were the first person they asked me about.

He's like, oh, shit. So this is how crazy this is. We're sitting in the Starbucks across from each other, and this guy walks in, who I know has been to federal prison, and he has this business where he helps felons. But he has a cake shop that was in the same area that we used to have our office. he walks in and I see him and I just walk up to him and I said I got to talk to you and he was like okay I was like he was like are you all right I said no I got to talk to you because I was going to get a

referral from him from an attorney because I knew he worked he had gone through cases and stuff and I said I'm going to call you later and so we sit back down and we start talking and while we're talking he was like I was like well I'm getting ready to go we walk back to the car we're standing outside kind of chumping it up and he gets a phone call And he's like, and I said, what is it? He was like, this is somebody else. The FBI is at their house. They had started making rounds.

They were going. And I said, I told you. I was like, what is he saying? And so at this particular person, they saw the FBI on their ring camera. So they were talking to them through their ring. But they said when I get home, they said they stuck their card in the door. I'm going to tell you who it is. I was like, it's got to be the same person.

It's got to be the same people. they're investigating. And that's how we knew. He didn't know he was on the investigation until I had told him that day. And so I left the attorney that my friend, she referred me to, I started trying to seek legal counsel at that point.

How'd your husband react to this? So now remember the day that they came me up in the mall, I didn't come back home. So nobody knew where I was. I didn't call him. I nobody knew where I was. So when I got back, everybody's like what what is going on with you like and so I ended up telling him at night

and I said um I got approached by the FBI I mean it took me like hours like I was laying in the bed like all night like just not moving like a statue and he's like what's wrong what's wrong and I'm like I got the FBI came he was like about the FBI and I'm like you know you remember when I used to work and that company he's like yeah and I was like the FBI came. He's like, so, so what? I mean, you don't work there. Like, everybody's like, well, you weren't there. You don't work there. You don't do it. You know. And I'm like, it ain't, it ain't that simple. It's not going to be. This, this is not good. But no one, none of my family thought that it was going to be anything at that point, because no one had ever had

an experience, but I knew. I knew. I was, I didn't know how far it was going to go, but I had a feeling that it was pretty bad because I'd also had the experience with my friend. who had already been. What ends up happening with the case? So initially they were going to charge me with identity theft because we were getting the Medicaid numbers and the birthdays and all that stuff. And that had a two-year mandatory minimum. And my attorney just really did not want me to have that mandatory minimum.

So we pled that off. And I ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit Medicaid fraud. and I ended up with a 22-month sentence. Thank God because I wasn't there because seven other companies popped up after I left. He was able to, he did it much bigger than, you know, he maintained and continued on under with seven, a total of, so it was a total of seven companies,

so five more companies. And did you cooperate against him as part of your plea deal? No, not like tell on them. Yeah, or, uh, confess to everything? Well, I confess to my part because the stuff is electronic. It's nothing to, it's all there. It's all there. It's in the paperwork. I just went on and played it out. How'd your mom react to this? My mom really thought that nothing was going to happen. Like, no one, everybody was like, you are not involved with that stuff. They were so naive.

They were so naive. I had been watching cases. Like, I was reading everything. Like, looking at other Medicaid cases. And I was like, this ain't going to end good. I was watching like my judge and how she sentenced people and like just keeping up with how she handled cases in general.

And I never saw her give anybody probation. So when my attorney was like, you know, you might, it's a possibility. You're on the guy, you know, there ain't nothing guaranteed. I was like, I'm going to prison. Like just, just tell me I'm going. He would like, just keep hope.

Just keep hope. And I was like, I don't see it. I don't see it. Do you feel like 22 months was a just sentence or unfair? At first, I thought it was unjust, right? Because this is why I thought it was unjust. I didn't really understand how conspiracy charges worked. Because I kept asking my attorney, like, I knew what I had done,

but I wanted to know what did they think that I had done, if that makes sense. Like, what are they saying that I did? Because I never really had my name on any paperwork. So what is it that they're saying that I did? And he kept saying, you conspired to commit Medicaid fraud. And I was like, but what did I do? Like, tell me what I did? Like, what are they saying that I did?

And I can never get a clear answer for it, right? So where I started getting into my argument with this whole thing was, I'm going to take the blame. Let me just take it and get this over with it. I'm not going to trial. We'd already went through the whole process of pleaded on off. You're not want to take the government to trial. You're not probably going to win.

You're going to get a whole lot more time. So go ahead, fall on the store for yourself, take your plea deal, and just hope you don't get a lot of time. That's what I was willing to do for the time that I was there, right? That 2012, 2013, 2014 period. I'm okay with that. But why am I being held liable for the time that I was not there? That's what doesn't make sense to me. And how do I know that I wasn't there?

Because I billed in a very specific way. I know how I submit claims. I can clearly look at this billing and tell you when somebody else picked this up. And I know when this argument happened because I can tell you when I left. So let me take my fall for this amount right here. But why do I have to take the fall for the time that I wasn't there? Well, because you didn't withdraw. You didn't withdraw from the crime.

You didn't whistleblow. And there was no clear, you just had an argument that we really can't prove that you had. We see transactions that he was sending you some money. Well, he was because we had a child, but it had nothing to do with anything else. I just don't think it's fair that I'm being held liable for the parts that I'm not there. Because then those dollar amounts fall on me, which put me higher up on the sentencing guidelines. That was the piece that, I mean, what? what can you do? What could I do about it? Because I couldn't prove that the way the judge says,

we can't prove that she didn't benefit because she was in a relationship. Even though we don't see anything tracking in her accounts, there's nothing there, but it could have been indirect. So she's going to be liable for this time frame too. That was the piece that I didn't think was fair. And what was the restitution amount? Two million. Two million. So it was two million each for four million total? No, his is like seven. Oh, his is seven. Yeah, because he has all the time pay. It was like his is more, his is more than mine. I think his billing totals like the part, I want to say, don't quote me on all my numbers, it was like $14 million with the total bill. Seven of it was fraudulent. His restitution is like five or something, four or five, something like that. And what happened with his prison sentence? How much time did he get? 13 years.

You got 13 years. years. Wow. Have you talked to him since? I did whenever I so I left in August he left in January. So his sentencing felt after mine so from that time from August up until I left I talked to him

that he went in in January when I came out we spoke after I came out and then when he found out I was doing the show he was pissed he was mad because he was going to through an appeal. He was worried that it was going to mess him up. But he has

luckily gotten granted the appeal. Now, you mentioned the show if you want to tell the audience. Oh, yeah. So I'm on Trap Queen's Season 4 episode 4 on BET Plus. Awesome. Yeah. Tell us about prison. What was that like for you? So I'm a person that thinks I can do anything, right? So I wasn't really worried about prison.

And also, you remember, I had the friend that had already gone and it just so happened. She had been in the same prison that I was going to. And I was okay going to prison. I wasn't okay leaving my kids. And I wasn't okay with leaving my daughter

because I knew he was going right after me. So that was the hard part. Prison itself to me felt like I live in a big dorm room with a bunch of women. That's what it felt like with no air condition and some bad food and it was dirty. It was a camp, right? It was a camp. So it was

tolerable. Was it clean? No. Was it horrible? Yes. That part was like, ugh. But it was the distance of not being on my family. I also had my father had dementia at the time. And I was like really worried when I left what his mental state was going to be by the time I got back and he passed while I was there. So that was my biggest hit because when I left, I was like, everybody just stay in place. FSA had just come out, so I knew I was going to be eligible for the first step at early credits. And I was just like, y'all just stay still. I'll be gone. I'd be right back thinking everything's going to be the same when I came back. And that wasn't the case. My dad died halfway through my sentence. Lots of relationships had changed, even though, you know, it wasn't an extremely long amount of

time. It was long enough that, you know, I lost my job, the career. My husband and I separated. Like I said, it was just my life outside was what was hard. Prison itself, I mean, I went in and read a bunch of books, worked out a lot and made a lot of good, met a lot of good people. How much time did you end up doing? Twelve months, eight days, because I got in right when the first step credits, I had I got all of my credits granted to me. I was one of the lucky. I was right in that pool.

I came in right at the right time, not at, well, if you can go at the right time, where I pretty much racked up all the first step chance credit act. First step at credit, second chance, and the second chance. So I came out for the home confinement, halfway house time. So I did right at a year and eight days. When everything was falling apart on the outside world while you were in prison, did that start to make you scared for release?

Were you not looking forward to it? You know, I had adjusted. You know, I kind of, I had at some point, as things were falling apart on the outside, meaning my dad was getting ill, the marriage was starting to fall apart, I had just decided there's nothing I can do about any of this from here. I'm just going to have to deal with it when I get out. Just compartmentalize it and not try to let this affect me, because I got to get out.

I got to get out, but I got to live here too. Like, I got to survive. Like, this is my life. And it's just so far as is it in here. And there's just nothing I can do out there. As much as I want to, I don't have, I can't call all day. So I got to let that go.

And I'm going to deal with it. I knew that even with the marriage, I felt like this probably isn't going to last, but now ain't the time to try to break up while I'm in prison. Let me just finish. And when I get out, I'll deal with outside. I'll deal with it when I get there.

Like I said, when my dad died, I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a furlough. They let me have a 72-hour furlough to go out to go to the funeral. And I was like one of the second furloughs that had been granted since COVID. Wow, and those are hard to get. They were hard to get.

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VALA to 527. While supplies last, selection varies by location. See associate at Lowe's.com for details. At one lady, her brother died, she had gone like a month before me, and then I got the second one. What was a relationship like with your kids during this whole thing, from the arrest to prison and everything? So my older girls knew that I was just moody and cranky, right? They knew that I was not myself. because I was just depressed.

Like, I didn't know what was going to happen. They were always like, gosh, what's wrong with her? She's so irritable. She's just not herself. And I remember finally telling them what night what was going on, but I chose not to tell my youngest daughter. Because I just didn't think that at her age, at the time she was nine, having such a dim, you know, the picture of what prison is,

I just didn't even want her to, think about me being in a prison. I didn't know how she was going to handle it. And I was embarrassed. That was a shame. I didn't want to tell her. So I told her I was going, I had gotten another job, and I was going to be working out of town.

So I never told her until I came back. How did she react when you came back? So when I came back, I took her out to dinner, and I was like, I got a secret. I got to tell you something. And she's like, okay, she's young. She's so naive. She's like, yes, Mom.

And I was like, so you know, whenever I told you, about me going away for this job. And she was like, yeah. And I was like, so I really didn't go away for a job. And she was like, huh? And I was like, I was in prison. And she was like, you were in prison. And I actually, I recorded her reaction.

And she was like, oh, that's funny. And I was like, funny. And so she was like, what bothered her was that her sisters knew and that she didn't. But there's a huge age gap between them. They're in their 20s. And then what also bothered her was the fact that they had come to see me. And she didn't. And so she was like, so they got to see you.

And I was like a couple times. And she was like, well, that's not fair. I would have wanted to see you too. And I was just like, I didn't want you to come there. So she seems okay now. But, you know, who knows, 20 years from now, she may hang my guts. What's been the rebuilding process like after prison? So far as my life has been concerned when I,

came back, I was completely starting over. Like, it was, like I said, no job, no relationship. Everything was like I walked back into a new house and like, and everybody's like, oh, you weren't going that long. It's long enough. It's long enough. It was, especially with the loss of my dad, because that was, he lived in the house with me. And then you walk away and you come back and you're down two people in a home, two significant people too, right? So it was starting. over by myself, not by myself, but me being the primary person because there's nobody else there to hold this house. I was right back where I started from whenever the whole thing started in the first place. I still ended right back up facing what I was supposed to do it the first time.

But this time, I was going to do it a little bit different. This time, I'm going to do it my way. And I felt like I had, I don't got nothing else to lose. I'm already at the bottom. So I might as well do what I want to do. I might as well just live and let this thing fall out. So I came back, my daughter had the event company, and I decided I'm just going to go work and do events.

And I did go back to I tried to go back and get a couple teaching jobs. I actually got offered a couple positions, but I knew that's not what I wanted to do. And so I declined both of those and I was like, I'm only going to work in this business with her. And we're going to

I'm just going to rebuild. And It might not be fast. Some might be a slow bill. And then I started telling my story on TikTok. What's your plan for the restitution? Do you think you'll be able to accomplish that? Well, you know, I was walking around the track one day at the prison. I told my faith says if God gave me a $2 million.

If I have a $2 million problem, God got a $2 million solution. I'm very capable of making $2 million. Like, it's not impossible. I have done it a couple times in my lifetime. It is joint amongst the seven of us who are on the case. So we will see how others contribute. But if they don't, I'm very much intending to take care of it myself. And the other people are employees, anyone that worked with you guys?

They were the recruiters that had gone out and recruited. They got a couple of their recruiters. And then to one person who was doing the note writing, the, when I left, the girl that he hired to come back and basically essentially do what I was doing, she got indicted. And then another gentleman, I have no idea what he was doing because remember some of these people were the people that were there during that five years or whatever that I wasn't there. So I don't know like what their roles really, really. I don't really know exactly what they were doing. But it's seven people total listed.

Do you feel like the restitution correlates directly to making amends? and finding redemption, or do you think you can achieve that without fulfilling the restitution? I want to. I want to pay it back because we took it. Not ethically.

It was not hours to have. So it should be repaid. Does the repayment necessarily have to be dollar to dollar? I don't know. I don't know if there's other things that I feel like I'm more of a service to doing in the kids. community, showing other people how not to do that, showing other women how to stand on your own and bank on yourself. Can I repay it in that way? Yes. Will I repay it back? I will if that is what

is required of me to do. If it does not, I'm not, again, depending on anybody, there was a time that would have been like, well, he's going, somebody's going to take care of it. No, this is my part. I want to clear that from me, from my, from my legacy. I don't want that over me. So, I'll continue to continue to work on it. But do you think you could still be at peace and find redemption before that's even paid off? Oh, I'm there now. That doesn't even, the restitution doesn't even come into my head. I pay my payments and I keep it pushing.

Like, I'm not, that does not stop anything that I'm doing nor does define any part of me. Like, it's not a huge part of my, like, oh, I need to, no, I'm not worried about that. I'm going to continue to move and I'm going to continue to build. and to do things. What's your plan with your story? Where do you see that going? Oh, my God. I'm just, you know, when you begin to walk the way, the way will appear,

so many opportunities have come just from me talking about it, right? You know, everyone I always says, like, your story is very different. Like, you have a very different background. A main part of what I feel like is maybe two parts. One, for individuals who are going through whatever a prison is for them, whatever it is, because I always say I was incarcerated long before. before I ever got to that camp. Helping individuals come out of their own personal prisons,

whatever that looks like. And then also just, I have four girls, right? I have four girls. And I know what bad relationships can do. I know what not feeling worthy can do. I know what feeling like you need to prove yourself can lead to. All those little underlying things, as within, so without. It starts on the inside and then you start doing stuff on the outside.

So you got to address those insecurities. You got to address all the stuff that tells you you're not worthy or that you're not smart enough or you're not good enough or you need more. You need to prove, prove, prove, perform, perform, perform. Until you really come one within yourself and make peace within yourself, you'll continue to chase. And I don't want to chase.

And I don't want to see my girls chase. I don't want to see other women chase and just really finding a pace of I am who I am. I'm okay with my mistakes. I like my mistakes. I'm happy with who I am. And I want to empower other people to do the same and to get out of survival mode.

Because survival mode will make you make some pretty terrible decisions. If one person could take away one lesson from your story, what would you want that to be? Freedom is possible. Freedom is possible. But it's the freedom in your mind. and you've got to set yourself free. You got to let your own self, you got to unchain yourself and not be held into a box or into a prison of other people and society and norms and standards.

You got to really come into yourself and figure out who you are and what you came here to do and walk that way. and all the other stuff will clear itself up. All the other stuff will happen. But you got to go there. You got to do that. Sherea, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Thank you. This is such a great interview.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. We'll have the links to everything you have in the works center. You want to start a podcast and whatnot. So we'll have that on the bio for people to check out. Okay. And I'm looking forward to seeing your story on that show.

Thank you. And I wish you the best in the future. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate you coming.