A Connecticut mental health counselor has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for defrauding Medicaid of more than $1.6 million to fund her lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
Rachel Collins, 44, of Hamden, provided psychotherapy to children and adolescents as a state-licensed professional counselor and the owner of Rachel Collins, LPC Counseling Services, located in North Haven.
Between January 2018 and March 2024, while enrolled as a behavioral health clinician in the Connecticut Medicaid program, Collins submitted more than 17,000 false claims for psychotherapy services, the feds said.
Some of those included claims for dates when she was working for another provider and hours billed for holidays, weekends and days when she was vacationing out of state.
During one such period in early 2023, Collins received over $9,300 from Medicaid after submitting 96 claims stating that she’d provided approximately 12 hours of in-person psychotherapy per day from March 9 to 16.
“In truth, Collins did not treat a single patient that week and, as displayed by multiple posts and photos on her public Facebook account, was vacationing at Disney World,” prosecutors said.
During her scheme, she took “several” trips around the U.S. and purchased “expensive tickets” to more than 30 concerts and sporting events.
She also spent more than $150,000 on food delivery services, including Uber Eats, DoorDash and GrubHub.
In August of last year, Collins waived her right to be indicted and pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud. As part of her plea deal, she agreed to pay full restitution and forfeit nearly $115,000 seized from a bank account during the investigation.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Sarala V. Nagala sentenced Collins to three years and one month in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
