NEW HAVEN – A Waterbury woman who worked as a Medicaid coordinator at a Stamford assisted living facility pleaded guilty Friday, June 13, in New Haven federal court to an offense stemming from multiple fraud schemes in which she defrauded three companies of more than $360,000.
Marlenin Vito, 46, of Waterbury, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 10, according to David X. Sullivan, US Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
Vito is released on a $25,000 bond pending sentencing.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Vito was employed as Medicaid coordinator at an assisted living facility located in Stamford. Her responsibilities included assisting the residents in applying for nursing home level Medicaid reimbursements, monitoring the residents’ patient trust accounts, and ensuring compliance with Medicaid regulations. She was also responsible for keeping journal entries for the residents’ trust accounts and to credit their accounts when funds were received, and for debiting patient accounts when payments were made on behalf of the residents or when cash was given to residents for incidental expenses.
Between approximately December 2019 and May 2021, Vito defrauded the unnamed Stamford company and its residents by generating checks from its system, forging a fellow employee’s signature on the checks, negotiating the fraudulent checks purportedly to give the cash proceeds to certain residents, and keeping the cash for her own use.
Vito then made false entries into that company’s accounting ledger by debiting the fraudulently obtained cash from the residents’ respective trust accounts. Many of the residents were not healthy enough or mentally capable of tracking their own expenses or monitoring the balances of their own trust accounts.
In certain instances, Vito cancelled residents’ supplemental health insurance coverage, but continued to deduct funds from the trust accounts and took the funds for herself. Also, when certain residents’ trust accounts were credited with COVID-19 stimulus payments, Vito took the funds for herself and then debited the residents’ accounts at a rate of approximately $60 a day until the stimulus funds were depleted.
During the scheme, Vito fraudulently negotiated approximately 500 checks, stealing approximately $310,820. When she was confronted by family members of certain residents, Vito created and provided to those family members false account statements that misrepresented the balances in the residents’ trust accounts.
After she was terminated by that company, Vito was hired as a bookkeeper and scheduler at an alarm company located in White Plains, New York. She stole from that company by making false representations about overtime for herself and her daughter, and by using company funds to order more than $10,000 worth of products to be delivered to her Waterbury residence.
That company was defrauded of approximately $23,558 through these schemes.
After she was fired by that company, Vito was hired as a bookkeeper at a law firm in Hartford. At that company Vito took fraudulently generated checks drawn on the company’s bank account and issued as “Pay to the Order of ‘Petty Cash,” forged the signature of an authorized employee on the checks, cashed the checks, and kept the funds for herself. She then recorded the fraudulently negotiated checks in Company C’s books and records as “Petty Cash.” Vito stole approximately $27,179 from that company.
This investigation is being conducted by the FBI, with the assistance of the Stamford Police Department, Hartford Police Department, Ridgefield Police Department, and the Putnam County (N.Y.) Sheriff’s Office.
