Manager of Columbus-Based Ambulette Service Sentenced for Health Care Fraud

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Ohio
January 25, 2011

COLUMBUS, OH—Phillip Taylor, former business manager for Xpress Transportation, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and ordered to pay $195,670.86 in restitution to Medicaid, the government health insurance program he defrauded.

Carter M. Stewart, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine; Lamont Pugh, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS); and Keith L. Bennett, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the sentence handed down today by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson.

On September 7, 2010, Taylor pleaded guilty to one count of false statement relating to health care matters. According to court documents Taylor was the business manager for a Columbus-based medical transportation company, Xpress Transportation, which provided wheelchair-assisted transportation to Ohio Medicaid recipients, among others.

As business manager, Taylor submitted invoices to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Medicaid Program, for wheelchair transportation services that were not rendered as billed, including billing Medicaid more than 20,000 times between January 2005 and April 2008 for an extra attendant that was never provided during the transportation services.

Stewart commended the cooperative investigation by special agents of the HHS-OIG, the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in Attorney General DeWine’s Office, and the FBI, as well as Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Constance Nearhood with Ohio Attorney General DeWine’s office and Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Malek, who prosecuted the case.