WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — The owner of a wellness center in Williamsburg was sentenced on Tuesday to seven years in prison for defrauding Virginia Medicaid and other healthcare programs out of more than $2 million, according to the Department of Justice.
According to the DOJ, 48-year-old Maria Kokolis owned Pamisage, Inc. in Williamsburg, a center for "integrative behavioral health and medicine, with a focus on weight management issues."
For two years, Kokolis reportedly created a scheme to defraud and overbill various healthcare benefit programs and Medicaid by charging psychotherapy services for noncomparable services, like sending smartphone messages or monitoring a client’s data.
The DOJ said Kokolis billed these psychotherapy services for times when she was out of the country on vacation and when the clients were out of state or sick in the hospital. She also billed people who met her one time and then never enrolled in the program.
According to the DOJ, Kokolis used the names, Medicaid ID numbers, and other identifying information of her clients in submitting these false claims to the healthcare benefit programs.
The DOJ said this wasn't Kokolis' only scheme. She also reportedly applied for a Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan falsely by claiming her monthly payroll was $25,000 and she had six employees. However, she had only one employee and her monthly payroll was not $25,000. She defrauded the program out of more than $54,000.
