Federal Reports

The OIG investigated the alleged theft of a U.S. Treasury check paid to Cheryle Jordan for land that Jordan sold through the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI’s) Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations. Jordan filed a claim with the Office of Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) stating she never received the check. After Jordan filed her claim, however, the OST determined the check had been cashed.We determined Jordan falsely reported the check as stolen. Jordan admitted she mailed a false claim to fraudulently obtain a second check. She subsequently pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana to mail fraud and was sentenced to 2 years’ probation.

Ohio made capitation payments totaling $90.5 million on behalf of deceased beneficiaries. We confirmed that all beneficiaries associated with the 100 capitation payments in our stratified random sample were deceased. Ohio properly recovered 37 of these capitation payments. However, Ohio did not recover the remaining 63 capitation payments totaling $74,495 ($51,431 Federal share). On the basis of our sample results, we estimated that Ohio did not recover unallowable payments to Medicaid Managed Care Organizations totaling at least $51.3 million ($38 million Federal share) during our audit period.

We reviewed four recommendations (recommendations 48 – 50 and 53) in our 2010 report on the future of BOEMRE to determine whether the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), now responsible for those recommendations, had fulfilled them. We confirmed that BSEE has resolved, implemented, and closed the recommendations.