A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City indicted a Salt Lake City woman on health care fraud charges last month, accusing her of billing Utah Medicaid more than $4 million for substance-abuse therapy that prosecutors say was often never provided at all. Jazzamin Tashay Clark, 43, allegedly recruited people experiencing homelessness into “sober living” arrangements and then billed the government for treatment they weren’t actually getting. She has not been convicted of anything, and the case is still at the indictment stage.
The allegations describe a scheme that used two things households don’t usually think to question: a government health program’s trust in billing paperwork, and the vulnerability of people who had nowhere else to go.
A federal indictment, not a conviction
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah, a federal grand jury returned the indictment against Clark on August 26, 2026, charging her with health care fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that from July 2024 through October 2025, Clark defrauded Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program, to obtain money for her own benefit. Her initial appearance on the indictment is scheduled for September 9, 2026, before a U.S. Magistrate Judge at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse in Salt Lake City. As the release itself states, an indictment is only an allegation, and Clark is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves the charges in court.
How the billing allegedly worked
Medicaid claims are required to carry a National Provider Identifier, a unique number assigned to the licensed health professional who ordered, supervised, or performed a billed service. Prosecutors allege Clark caused Medicaid to be billed for therapy under the NPI numbers of several out-of-state providers, many of whom were unqualified to deliver that kind of care and, according to the Internal Revenue Service’s account of the case, were not even aware their numbers were being used. To generate the claims in the first place, Clark allegedly recruited Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries, drawing many of them from people experiencing homelessness, and told them she would provide Medicaid-reimbursable substance-abuse treatment. Because the NPI system is designed to trace every billed service back to a specific accountable provider, prosecutors say routing claims through numbers borrowed from out-of-state providers who never saw a single patient let the alleged scheme keep billing without tripping the safeguard the number was built to enforce.
“Sober living homes” that left people to fend for themselves
Part of the alleged scheme involved renting houses in West Valley City and elsewhere and presenting them as sober living homes for people working through substance-use disorders. Prosecutors say that in reality, the homes did little to help residents maintain sobriety and instead left Medicaid beneficiaries largely on their own. Combined with services allegedly billed but never delivered, and services billed under providers who never touched the patients, the government says the scheme generated more than $4 million in Medicaid payments over roughly 15 months.
Who investigated, and why this case now
The case was investigated jointly by the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit inside the Utah Attorney General’s Office, whose stated mission is protecting the integrity of the Medicaid program through detection, investigation, prosecution, and financial recovery. U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak said her office “remains firmly committed to pursuing individuals who attempt to steal from taxpayer funded programs.” The indictment also lands amid a broader federal push: the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, created in April 2026 to centralize investigation and prosecution of fraud against taxpayer-funded programs, is cited in the release as part of the administration’s wider effort to target fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs.
What Utah’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit is built to do
The Medicaid Fraud Control Unit that helped build this case describes its own mission as protecting the integrity of the Medicaid program and the safety and property of Utah residents through detection, investigation, prevention, prosecution, and financial recovery. Its stated objectives include prosecuting providers who violate Utah law, stopping or preventing the loss of Medicaid funds to fraud, waste, or abuse, recovering funds already lost, and recommending fixes to keep the same scheme from recurring. The unit also investigates patient abuse and neglect when a caregiver is paid through Medicaid, a mandate distinct from, but related to, the billing-fraud allegations against Clark.
What a case like this costs beyond the $4 million
Medicaid receives both federal and state funding and is intended to provide health care benefits to indigent individuals, including people who are aged, blind, disabled, or have dependent children; in Utah it’s jointly overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Utah Medicaid. Money paid out on fraudulent claims doesn’t just disappear from a budget line; it’s money the program can’t spend on beneficiaries who need real treatment, and it’s the kind of loss regulators point to when they justify tighter provider screening that can slow down legitimate care. For now, the case remains an allegation. Clark’s initial appearance on September 9 will be the first real test of how the government’s evidence holds up in court, and under the federal rules that govern every indictment, nothing in the case changes her legal status until a judge or jury says otherwise.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.…