Anchorage Woman Who Defrauded Alaska Medicaid Program Sentenced to Federal Prison

Anchorage, Alaska – U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder announced that an Anchorage woman was sentenced yesterday by Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess to serve eight months in federal prison for defrauding the state of Alaska Medicaid Program out of $90,000. 

Mi Ran Yu, 41, of Anchorage, acted as a personal care assistant for her parents, who qualified for Medicaid assistance, between 2012 and 2016.  Yu was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2016 for felony health care fraud charges stemming from a scheme to grossly exaggerate the alleged infirmity of her parents, and to falsely report the number of hours which she was allegedly spending to render assistance to them.  Yu pleaded guilty in January 2017 to 20 counts of committing health care fraud against the Medicaid program.

In addition to the eight-month prison sentence, Judge Burgess ordered Yu to pay $90,000 in restitution to the state of Alaska Medicaid Program.  Yu was also placed on a three-year period of supervised release following service of her custody sentence, and was ordered to pay the federal government a special assessment of $2,000.00 

At sentencing, Judge Burgess noted that cases of fraud against social services programs such as Medicaid are often hard to detect, and that sentences of incarceration in these types of cases are especially warranted as a general deterrence to the public.  As stated by Judge Burgess “people need to understand that there are serious consequences to committing this type of fraud beyond simply paying the money back.”

This case was investigated by the state of Alaska Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Bottini.