WATERTOWN, Conn. — A Watertown occupational and physical therapy practice and its owner have agreed to a settlement of about $2.37 million to resolve allegations that they overbilled Connecticut's Medicaid program, Attorney General William Tong's office said Friday.

The settlement with Therapy Unlimited LLC and owner Catherine Risigo Wickline, an occupational therapist licensed in Connecticut, resolves a lawsuit the attorney general's office filed in 2019 under the Connecticut False Claims Act. Under the agreement, the practice and Wickline will forfeit $433,700 in suspended Medicaid payments and pay $1,932,570 in restitution already ordered in a related criminal case, the office said.

The practice, which treated mostly children at its Watertown office, submitted thousands of inflated claims to the Connecticut Medical Assistance Program between January 2014 and July 2019, according to the attorney general's office. Investigators found that the practice routinely billed for up to two and a half hours of therapy when only 30 to 45 minutes had been provided, the office said. Nearly all of the claims listed Wickline as the provider, including, the state alleged, in cases where a lower-level or unlicensed provider had done the work.

The civil case was put on hold while a criminal case brought in 2021 by the Chief State's Attorney's Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit moved forward. In 2024, Wickline was convicted of first-degree larceny and health insurance fraud after entering an Alford plea, in which a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges the state has enough evidence to convict, the office said. She received an eight-year prison sentence, fully suspended, and five years of probation.

Because of the conviction, the inspector general's office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services barred Wickline from serving as a provider in government health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, according to the attorney general's office.

This brief was drafted by AI from a public agency or political press release and published by The New England Signal. Why we use AI for stories like this one.