MILWAUKEE - A federal grand jury indicted 34-year-old Lakia Jackson on Wednesday, Oct. 16 for allegedly perpetrating a $3.7 million health care fraud and kickback scheme. Officials said it involved Jackson lying about having provided prenatal care coordination services and childcare coordination services to at-risk and low-income pregnant women and new mothers in Milwaukee.
According to the indictment, from June 2020 through December 2021, Jackson owned We Care Services, which was a Prenatal Care Coordination (PNCC) agency operating in Milwaukee. PNCC agencies are reimbursed by Medicaid when they provide services intended to address Wisconsin’s historically high rate of infant mortality among at-risk populations. Specifically, PNCC services are supposed to ensure that women at high risk are identified as early as possible in their pregnancies,
receive psychosocial support, prenatal care services, and health and nutrition education, and are referred to available community services that they need to help them achieve positive birth and parenting outcomes, a news release says.
The indictment alleges Jackson offered and provided kickbacks to induce women to sign up for prenatal care coordination services with We Care Services, and then allegedly submitted millions of dollars of fraudulent claims for services never actually provided to those women. Jackson also allegedly submitted claims for services she contended were provided to her clients before she or anyone from her agency had ever met the client.
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The indictment charges Jackson with multiple counts of health care fraud and false statements relating to health care matters. She also faces violations of the anti-kickback statute, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
If convicted, Jackson faces a mandatory sentence of two years in prison for each count of aggravated identity theft, up to twenty years in prison for each count of health care fraud, up to ten years in prison for each count of anti-kickback statute violations and money laundering, and up to five years in prison for each count of False Statements.
The FBI and the Medicaid Fraud Control and Elder Abuse Unit of the Wisconsin Department of Justice investigated the case.