Alaska's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has stumbled onto the case of a tax assessor who allegedly bilked Medicaid out of $60,000 after the assessor's ex-husband blew the whistle on his former wife.
The man told investigators that his ex-wife, Lorie Nabong Batac, 36, had been billing Medicaid for taking care of her dad and step-mom but wasn't putting in the hours charged, according to information about the alleged crime filed by Alaska's Department of Law.
Batac's ex-husband claimed the couple's teenage son was actually doing the work. When Medicaid's fraud- control investigators looked into it, they say they found evidence Batac had double- and triple-billed her time.
On Monday, Batac was charged with two counts of Medical Assistance Fraud. One count is a felony, the other a misdemeanor.
According to court records, Batac currently works as municipal property tax assessor with city of Anchorage. An employee directory for the city lists her as an appraiser in the finance department.
"I've hired an attorney and we are working through the legal process," she said by phone on Monday. "The true facts will come out."
Prosecutors claim that from October 2008 to January 2012, Batac fraudulently billed Medicaid for $60,034 worth of personal-care attendant services. Their investigation showed either Batac's father or step-mom were out of the country at the time she was supposedly helping them, or that she was at her night job as a Home Depot cashier during other hours she claimed to have logged.
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com