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Jada Antoine has quite the resume for a hospice nurse. From January 2009 to April 2012, she cared for more than 100 patients while employed by eight Dallas hospice companies.
The thing is, Antoine isn’t a nurse. She isn’t licensed as any kind of healthcare provider. Antoine didn’t let that stop her. She found a woman who was a nurse and took her driver’s license and Social Security card was employed by the hospices as a registered nurse.
Soon though, Antoine would learn the lesson so many student-loan borrowers before her have learned — you don’t fuck with the feds when it comes to money. You see, the hospitals she worked for billed Medicare and Medicaid $2.3 million for treatment provided — inasmuch as any non-nurse can provide treatment that should come from a nurse — by Antoine’s services.
A federal warrant was issued for Antoine in May, and she was later arrested in Georgia. Tuesday, she pleaded guilty to a single count of “fraud in connection with means of identification” and now faces up to 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and having to pay back all of that already disbursed Medicare and Medicaid money.
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Antoine is currently being held in federal prison, pending her sentencing, scheduled for March 2015.
