BATON ROUGE – The owner of a personal care services agency has been arrested and charged with defrauding the state’s Medicaid program of more than a half million dollars.

Patricia A. Bell, 51, of Rayville, surrendered to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

Bell, the owner of Cookies Helping Hand Inc. in Rayville, is charged with 60 counts of filing or maintaining false public records and seven counts of Medicaid fraud.

The arrest stems from an investigation of billing practices at Bell’s companies in Rayville and Crowville.

During an extensive review of billing records, patient logs, employee time sheets and other reports, investigators discovered that more than $575,000 was billed to and paid by Louisiana Medicaid for services allegedly provided by employees of Bell’s company, even though those employees were no longer employed by her company.

Bell also is accused of billing for services reportedly rendered while patients were in the hospital and for services when the employee was actually working at another job.

In an additional scheme, Bell is accused of billing for services allegedly provided by employees on whom Bell did not obtain a legitimate background check.

The Medicaid program requires a background check to be conducted on all personal care service workers.

Blatantly fraudulent and altered documents purporting to be background checks were among the false documents found in Bell’s office. The investigation revealed that dozens of employees had records indicating a falsified background, a falsified background check, or no background check at all in their personnel file.

Additional arrests related to this case are expected.

If you suspect Medicaid Fraud, please contact the Louisiana Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at (888) 799”-6885.