Man convicted for conspiracy to defraud N.C. Medicaid program of over $11 million

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WECT) - Attorney General Josh Stein has announced the conviction of a man for defrauding the North Carolina Medicaid program of over $11 million.

Charlotte resident Donald Booker was convicted of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, multiple violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute, money laundering conspiracy and money laundering on Jan. 10.

He owned a urine toxicology testing laboratory called United Diagnostics Laboratories and a mental health and substance abuse treatment provider called United Youth Care Services. His codefendant Delores Jordan owned the housing provider Legacy Housing and plead guilty to healthcare fraud conspiracy and money laundering charges in December.

Stein says that the incidents took place from Jan. 2016 to Aug. 2019.

“Jordan would recruit people who were Medicaid eligible for housing and other programs and services. They would require beneficiaries to submit urine samples when they enrolled in the program, and they provided the samples to Booker and UDL for testing that wasn’t medically necessary,” Stein’s office said in a release.

He says that Booker would pay illegal kickbacks to Jordan and other people for the urine samples. Then, he says they both laundered the proceeds to disguise information about the payments.

The case was prosecuted by the AG’s Medicaid Investigations Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, the Federal Bureau of Investigation - Charlotte Division, and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division - Charlotte Field Office.