The owner of a Connecticut behavioral health practice was sentenced to 15 months in prison for billing Medicaid for thousands of services he and his staff were not licensed to provide.
Ramon Apellaniz owned Gemini Project, a Newington, Conn.-based practice that provided counseling to patients with mental, behavioral and emotional disorders. Only one person on staff was actually licensed to perform this therapy, according to an April 17 news release from the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice.
The majority of the 12,771 claims Mr. Apellaniz's practice submitted to Medicaid between January 2018 and July 2019 were for services provided by unlicensed counselors. Another 462 of these claims were for services never provided by anyone, according to the criminal justice division.
Mr. Apellaniz pleaded no contest to charges of larceny, health insurance fraud and identity theft. On April 17, he was sentenced to eight years in prison, with his sentence suspended after 15 months served, according to the news release. He was ordered to serve five years of probation once his prison sentence is completed. He paid $156,000 in restitution, with another $753,269 to be paid during his probation.