Hartford school board sues ex-teacher on allegations of $200K in fraudulent health insurance claims [Hartford Courant]

The Hartford school board is suing a former teacher, claiming she committed health insurance fraud by concealing her divorce for 15 years while her ex-husband racked up more than $200,000 in ineligible medical claims.

Previously, school and city audits into health insurance fraud determined Patricia Wakefield and her ex-husband Kramer Wakefield cost the district an even higher sum, about $680,000 in ineligible claims between 2002, when they got divorced, and 2017.

However, the Hartford Board of Education is only able to seek a portion of that from its new lawsuit — filed Oct. 11 — because of civil statutes of limitations, Chief Internal Auditor Craig Trujillo said Thursday.

In her initial response to the lawsuit, Patricia Wakefield — who resigned from the school district in July 2019 — denies that she knew or should have known that she was required to tell human resources when she got divorced. She also denies that she breached her employment agreement with the Hartford Board of Education, the school district handbook or the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the Hartford Federation of Teachers.

“Nothing is clear at this particular moment,” Wakefield’s attorney, Anand Ahuja, said Thursday. “If there was any instructions given to my client when she joined this particular employer (in 1984) — and what kind of instructions were given, whether those instruction were violated by my client — all of this right now is unclear.”

Wakefield, of East Hartford, was one of dozens of school and city employees identified by a series of audits in 2017 and 2018 as having an ex-spouse or other ineligible dependent on their health care plan. While Wakefield divorced her husband in 2002, she did not take him off her plan until 2017, just before Schools Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez started work and initiated an audit into the eligibility of dependents on employees’ health care plans.

That review and a subsequent investigation by city auditors revealed that a number of people had taken advantage of their health insurance.

Wakefield and more than two dozen other employees had ex-spouses on their plans. Seventeen of those ex-spouses received about $63,000 in claims following their divorces. Twenty-one cases were referred to Hartford police because employees failed to submit eligibility documentation to city auditors.

Most of the individuals owed small amounts — a few hundred to a few thousand dollars — and have paid the money back or agreed to payment plans. A few of the debts were cleared, and numerous other dependents were dropped voluntarily from health insurance by employees.

Initially, the city hoped to press charges against Wakefield and two other people who were found by the audits to owe more than $10,000 in fraudulent claims. A police officer, who retired in June, agreed to repay about $20,000 in claims, a city auditor said in 2019. It’s unclear whether the third employee, a firefighter, owes money for more than $200,000 in claims made by his ex-wife.

The school board also fired Joanna Laiscell, the district’s former executive director of financial management, claiming her ex-husband remained on her plan for more than three years and made nearly $6,700 in ineligible claims. Laiscell disputes the school board’s characterization of the health insurance situation and her separation from the district.

No employee cost the district more than Patricia Wakefield, according to the Internal Audit Commission, the independent body that reviews city audits. Her husband, Kramer Wakefield, has not responded to the new lawsuit.

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.

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