Another Butte mental health counselor sentenced for Medicaid fraud

State prosecutors say Katie Crowe repeatedly submitted Medicaid claims for counseling services she didn't provide from February 2017 to December 2020 then presented false treatment records to mislead investigators.

She was charged with felony Medicaid fraud and felony tampering with or fabricating evidence, which were punishable by a combined 20 years in prison plus fines.

She reached a deal with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to the fraud charge and on Jan. 30, District Judge Ray Dayton gave her a five-year suspended sentence and ordered her to pay $49,900 in restitution. The stated dropped the tampering charge.

Crowe is at least the second mental health counselor in Butte in recent years who was caught and charged with bilking Medicaid out of tens of thousands of dollars.

In June 2021, District Judge Kurt Krueger sentenced Dana Trandahl to 135 days in jail and a 10-year suspended sentence. She was also ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution to Medicaid, which provides health coverage to those with low incomes or disabilities.

The Montana Board of Behavioral Health also suspended Trandahl's license and as of Monday, it remained suspended. The board put Crowe's license on three years of probation in May 2020 for allowing a 15-year-old client to live with her for six-and-a-half weeks.

The state's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit began investigating Crowe, a licensed, clinical, professional counselor, in March 2020 after a review of her billing and treatment records revealed indications of fraud.

The review showed she submitted Medicaid claims for appointments that overlapped and billed up to 12 hours in a day just for Medicaid patients.

An auditor noted that Crowe's Medicaid billing rose from $31,584 in 2017 to $106,647 in 2018 and then jumped to $136,298 the next year.

The increases occurred even though she only gained one additional Medicaid patient from 2017 to 2018 and actually lost 13 patients from 2018 to 2019, prosecutors from the Montana Attorney General's Office said.

There were other red flags.

"Despite having only 21 distinct Medicaid patients in 2019, defendant billed Medicaid for one-hour sessions for nine or more of those patients in a single day 44 times in 2019," prosecutors said.

Agents interviewed several of Crowe's Medicaid patients and "multiple" ones denied receiving services for which Medicaid was billed. One patient said she saw Crowe only three times.

"In contrast, defendant billed Medicaid for 67 sessions with (that patient), always in groups of three to five sessions in a week." Crowe produced treatment notes "purporting to document nearly all of those claimed sessions."

Crowe asked Dayton to follow terms of the plea agreement in sentencing, which he did. It included the $49,900 in restitution, suspended sentence and the state dropping the tampering charge.

The Montana AG's Office says Crowe's conviction was reported to a federal exclusion database and she cannot participate in the Medicaid program for five years. The same was exclusion was imposed on Trandahl.

According to estimates from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, Medicaid and Medicare fraud costs taxpayers who fund the programs about $100 billion annually. Some put the figure much higher.

Mike Smith is a reporter at the Montana Standard with an emphasis on government and politics.

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