Quincy addition treatment center owner charged with fraud for fourth time, stealing $44k [The Patriot Ledger]

Patriot Ledger, The (Quincy, MA)

DEDHAM — A Quincy woman is being held on $25,000 cash bail after pleading not guilty to charges of filing a false health care claim and one charge of larceny over $250 by a single scheme during her arraignment in Norfolk Superior Court on Tuesday.

Judge Beverly Cannone ordered Nicole Kasimatis, 47, be held on $25,000 cash bail. Kasimatis is already being held on $1 million surety or $100,000 cash in a case the Attorney General's Office brought in November, in which she faces two counts of medical assistance fraud by a provider, one count of filing a false health care claim and two counts of larceny over $1,200, according to online court records.

The case, indicted in December, is the fourth brought against Kasimatis. She is already on probation from cases brought in 2015 and 2018.

Kasimatis is the owner of Fortitude Counseling in Quincy and Assistant Attorney General William Champlin IV said in court documents that she falsely billed Medicare for $151,000 for services she never provided between 2019 and 2021. Medicare paid out $44,000 for her fraudulent claims.

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Kasimatis was already on probation for medical insurance fraud during a portion of the time that she was allegedly fraudulently billing Medicare, according to court documents.

Investigators interviewed five fraud victims who said Kasimatis never provided them services. Instead, they were seeing two social workers at her clinic who left between 2019 and 2020. After those two social workers left, Kasimatis continued to bill Medicare, Champlin said in court documents.

She then used that money for international travel, trips to Disney Land, baseball games and to post bail in two cases from 2015 and 2018, also for fraud, Champlin said in court documents.

The most recent case came after prosecutors kept open the grand jury investigation that resulted in her being charged in November with two counts of medical assistance fraud by a provider, one count of filing a false health care claim and two counts of larceny over $1,200, according to court records. She is also accused of being a common and notorious thief, which could lengthen her sentence if she's convicted.

Champlin said in court documents that in Kasimatis' case from November, she fraudulently billed $483,578 to government insurance companies, while fraudulent claims totaling $4,831 were sent to private insurers.

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Grand juries previously indicted Kasimatis in 2015 and 2018 in two other cases on charges including public assistance fraud, larceny, document forgery and uttering a false money order. Kasimatis pleaded guilty in those two cases.

Kasimatis has been before Cannone before, when Cannone sentenced Kasimatis in November 2020 to five years' probation and 36 days in jail, which she had spent behind bars before posting bond.

In a statement following Kasimatis' 2020 sentencing, Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey said his prosecutors agreed to a plea deal with no prison time because it would get restitution to the victims, the Department of Early Education and Care, quickly. In all, in 2020, she was ordered to pay $103,000 in restitution.

In that case, prosecutors said Kasimatis under-reported her income as a licensed social worker and lied about her employment to fraudulently collect benefits from the state Department of Transitional Assistance, MassHealth, the federal Social Security Administration and the state Department of Early Education and Care between Aug. 23, 2006, and April 27, 2018.

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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at [email protected].