A Connecticut woman who helped manage a $33 million health care fraud and financing scheme that targeted Curry Automotive in Greenburgh was sentenced in White Plains federal court on March 28 to five and a half years in federal prison.
Erin Verespy had pleaded guilty to bank fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel also sentenced her to five years of supervised release and ordered her to pay more than $16 million in restitution and to forfeit more than $1 million she personally collected in the scheme.
Verespy, 50, of Trumbull, Connecticut, was the chief financial officer of Employee Benefit Solutions, a Wilton, Connecticut insurance firm that worked for Curry.
EBS owners Anthony and Patricia Riccardi have pleaded not guilty to charges. Vanessa Battle, the vice president of client services, pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
Curry Automotive, a multi-state, multi-brand car dealership company, was self-insured and used EBS to manage employee medical claims.
From 2015 to 2018, according to court records, EBS billed Curry for $26 million in health care claims. But most of the charges were false, and EBS reimbursed the health care providers for only $8.1 million.
As the scheme began to collapse, the government says, EBS kept it going by applying for loans to be used ostensibly to buy billing software but were used to pay selective health care claims.
Verespy had worked for EBS as an outside accountant through her firm, All About Numbers. In 2017, Anthony Riccardi asked her to join EBS as the CFO.
Verespy quickly learned that the Riccardis were stealing funds, according to a letter she wrote to Judge Seibel. By then, most of the damage to Curry had been done and EBS was buckling under debts owed to health care providers.
Verespy’s job was to help triage Curry employees and health care providers who were demanding payments and to create false banking and business records to obtain high-interest loans to keep the scheme going.
The hope was that “some as-yet unconceived get-money-fast idea would allow the full repayment of the embezzled funds,” her attorney, C. Christian Young says in a sentencing memorandum, “such that the underlying fraud would not be revealed.”
Verespy had agreed to a plea deal that called for a prison term within federal guidelines of 11to 13 years. But Young recommended supervised release, home confinement, or minimal prison time.
Young cites Verespy’s “morbid plethora of deteriorating medical conditions,” growing up in a broken home with a dysfunctional family, “genuine remorse and contrition,” and efforts to rehabilitate herself.
Among the ailments documented by her physicians are lupus, diabetes, fibromyalgia, anemia, gastro reflux disease, and osteoarthritis.
She began drinking at age 16, to numb her physical and psychological pain, and her dependence on alcohol worsened as she encountered more setbacks and turmoil in her life.
“I am ashamed to acknowledge that I lacked the good character to stand up and make the right choices,” she says in her letter to Judge Seibel. “Knowing that I made these decisions will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence within the agreed upon 13 to 14 years.
She spent two years “almost exclusively dedicated to fraud,” assistant prosecutor Nicholas S. Bradley said in a sentencing letter, and received more than $1 million.
Curry automotive has been sued by a health care provider, as a result of the EBS fraud, and Curry employees have been hounded by collection agencies and in some instances denied medical appointments because of past due bills.
“The government acknowledges the significant difficulties the defendant has faced throughout her life,” the sentencing letter says, “including family dysfunction, physical abuse, chronic health problems and substance abuse issues.”
But her attorney’s recommendation for home confinement, Bradley said, “is simply not appropriate.”
