A housing-stability program is supposed to be one of the quieter parts of the safety net — the kind of support that helps someone stay in their home while they get back on their feet. A federal jury just found that one Minnesota woman turned that exact program into a $3.6 million fraud, billing for help her own clients say they never got.
What the jury actually decided
A federal jury in St. Paul convicted Sharmaine Meadows, 45, of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, on three counts of health care fraud. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office press release, published October 8, prosecutors said her company billed Minnesota’s Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program more than $3.6 million for services that were never actually provided — including hours billed while the beneficiaries were in the hospital.
Each of the three counts carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison; sentencing hasn’t happened yet. This is a conviction, not a settlement or a plea — prosecutors took the case to trial and a jury heard the evidence before reaching this verdict.
What made the fraud provable in court
According to prosecutors, the government’s own clients testified that services billed in their name were never actually delivered — the kind of direct, first-person contradiction that’s hard for a defense to explain away. Billing for hours while a beneficiary was documented as hospitalized is an even more specific red flag: it’s not a judgment call about service quality, it’s a timeline that doesn’t add up on paper…