Man Charged with Racketeering, Theft by Swindle in $7.3 Million Medicaid Scam

(KNSI) — The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office announced charges Wednesday morning against a man for racketeering and five counts of felony theft by swindle.

According to investigators with the Fraud Unit Control Unit, Chavis Willis billed Medicaid for services that were neither provided nor delivered under an agency he was prohibited from managing in the first place due to a previous conviction for aiding and abetting second degree murder.
Willis is accused of using a Medicaid-funded business, 1-0 Granny’s Helpful Hands LLC, which claimed to provide home and community based services (HCBS) and PCA services to Medicaid recipients throughout Minnesota, to bilk the Medicaid program out of over $7.3 million.

Investigators say Granny’s was owned by Willis’ mother, Raynell Finn, who lived in California, but she was minimally involved in operating the business, while Willis controlled all agency operations. Willis repeatedly and falsely represented to the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) that his mother owned the business, including forging his mother’s signature on documents and impersonating his mother in phone calls and correspondence with DHS.

While controlling the business, Willis hired a biller with whom he was in a romantic relationship and who had prior identity theft and other felony convictions that prohibited her from working as a biller at a Medicaid-funded business. While the biller worked at Granny’s and Willis operated it, Granny’s regularly billed for services not provided to Medicaid recipients. At one point, the biller began serving a jail sentence for her prior identity theft conviction; Willis impersonated his mother on a call with jail staff to ensure the biller was authorized for work release to continue working at 1-0 Granny’s Helpful Hands.

The biller has since pled guilty to felony theft by false representation for her role in the scheme.

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