North Carolina clinic owner is sentenced to 52 months in prison for defrauding Medicaid

Date: Sept. 26, 2024

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Charlotte, NC - Aljihad Shabazz, of Kernersville, N.C., was sentenced today to 52 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release for his role in a scheme that defrauded the North Carolina Medicaid Program (Medicaid) of more than $4.7 million, announced Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. In addition to the prison term imposed, U.S. District Judge Frank D. Whitney also ordered Shabazz to pay $4,711,159.88 in restitution.

Donald "Trey" Eakins, Special Agent in Charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Charlotte Field Office, Robert M. DeWitt, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Charlotte Division, and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who oversees the North Carolina Medicaid Division (MID), join U.S. Attorney King in making today's announcement.

According to court records and the sentencing hearing, Shabazz was the owner and operator of Reign & Inspirations, LLC (R&I), a clinic that provided outpatient behavioral services in Greensboro and surrounding areas. Between 2017 and 2020, Shabazz conspired with other individuals to carry out an extensive health care fraud scheme involving the fraudulent submissions of fake reimbursement claims to Medicaid, for services that were never provided to Medicaid beneficiaries.

Court records show that Shabazz obtained the personal identifying information (PII) of Medicaid beneficiaries through community outreach programs, including football and mentoring programs, and misused the beneficiaries' PII to create and submit hundreds of fraudulent reimbursement claims and to receive payment for services that were never in fact provided by R&I.

Over the course of the scheme, Shabazz used the beneficiaries' PII to submit more than 1,500 fraudulent reimbursement claims to Medicaid, some of which claimed that R&I provided services that exceeded 24 hours in a single day.

Court records show that the reimbursement payments made by Medicaid were deposited in bank accounts under Shabazz's control. Shabazz used a portion of the fraudulent proceeds to pay kickbacks to his co-conspirators and to cover personal expenses, including to pay for personal travel, luxury items, and timeshares, and to make cash withdrawals.

On June 14, 2023, Shabazz pleaded guilty to health care fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. He will be ordered to report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility.

In announcing Shabazz's sentence, Judge Whitney stated that, "There are serious consequences for stealing from government funded programs such as Medicaid and Medicare."

The IRS-CI Charlotte Field Office, the FBI in Charlotte, and NCDOJ's Medicaid Investigations Division investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael E. Savage and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristina Fleisch with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte prosecuted the case.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.

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