Husband and Wife Sentenced to Prison for $2.7-Million Sheppard Pratt Billing Scheme

A husband and wife have been sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to pocketing $2.7 million in billings paid to a company they controlled, by the Sheppard Pratt health system in Towson, which employed the wife.

Lynette Nyabiosi, 50, and her husband, Willie Evans III, also known as James Davies or James Davis, 54, live in Bear, Delaware. Nyabiosi was previously employed by Sheppard Pratt Health System in Towson, Maryland. In secret, the couple also controlled a company called Information Management Solutions Technology (IMST), designed to appear to be a third-party contractor performing IT services for Sheppard Pratt.

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a statement indicating the couple pleaded guilty Friday to billing Sheppard Pratt approximately $2.7 million from their company IMST, and then pocketing the money into their personal bank account, for personal use.

Sheppard Pratt Health System, headquartered in Towson, is a private, non-profit health system in Maryland which offers mental health, substance use and special education services. According to the statement, from November 2005 to September 2014, Nyabiosi was the director of the Health Information Management Department (HIM Department) of Sheppard Pratt. The department was responsible for maintaining patient medical records. As the director, Nyabsiosi was the highest ranking employee in the HIM Department.

On March 7, 2007, Nyabiosi, on behalf of Sheppard Pratt, entered into a contract with IMST to manage medical records for Sheppard Pratt. Nyabiosi never informed Sheppard Pratt that she and her husband were affiliated with IMST, in violation of Sheppard Pratt’s conflict of interest policy. To further hide their affiliation with IMST, Evans signed the contract on behalf of IMST as “James Davies,” a purported regional account representative at IMST. Thereafter, Evans continued to represent himself to Sheppard Pratt staff as “James Davis,” an account representative, even though no such person was ever affiliated with IMST, the statement explained.

From 2007 to 2014, authorities said the defendants submitted over 180 false invoices requesting that Sheppard Pratt pay IMST for work which was never performed, or for excessively inflated amounts for the work that was actually performed.

"For example, IMST picked up approximately 2,863 boxes of patient records from Sheppard Pratt for short-term storage, yet the invoices falsely represented that IMST had picked up over 500,000 boxes of patient records," the statement read. "Other invoices and documents provided to Sheppard Pratt falsely represented that IMST had picked up and was storing 20,270 boxes of records from the company Iron Mountain, when in fact, IMST never picked up a single box."

"And on two separate occasions in 2009, the defendants sent invoices to Sheppard Pratt for purported work on a project to digitize older patient records. The defendants paid a third party company $26,395 to complete the work, but they billed Sheppard Pratt $546,510," the statement continued. "Nyabiosi personally approved all of the false invoices, causing Sheppard Pratt to mail checks to IMST totaling $2,742,791."

After Nyabiosi and Evans pleaded guilty on Friday, they were sentenced to 41 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

The couple were ordered by the judge to forfeit and pay restitution for $2,742,791, and to forfeit two residences located in Bear and Newark, Delaware, and three vehicles.