HARRISBURG—Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced that Rex Barr, owner of Rides Your Way, a non-medical transportation service provider, pleaded guilty to being involved in a scheme to charge Pennsylvanians for non-medical transportation plans that were not medically necessary. He is one of four defendants charged for participating in this scam.
“The defendant took advantage of a program meant to help sick, elderly, and disabled Pennsylvanians,” said AG Shapiro. “His scheme caused the Commonwealth’s Medicaid program to be billed extraordinary sums for unnecessary transportation services, with each ride costing taxpayers thousands of dollars. Today’s guilty plea holds him accountable for his crimes.”
The Office of Attorney General began investigating these individuals in 2019, after the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services and a managed care organization separately reported that multiple service coordination agencies were billing large amounts of money for services never provided.
The investigation revealed that each business used a non-medical transportation service provider called Rides Your Way, owned by Barr. The service coordination agencies enrolled their participants in Rides Your Way’s expensive non-medical transportation subscription plans, despite the services being unnecessary and rarely used. Between 2017 and 2019, the service coordination agencies received over $7.9 million from Medicaid, supposedly for reimbursement for services provided by Rides Your Way. However, during that same time period, Rides Your Way only provided a total of 1,712 rides to Medicaid consumers. This meant each Rides Your Way ride cost taxpayers an average of more than $4,600.
Barr pleaded guilty to two counts of Medicaid Fraud, both felonies of the third degree. Sentencing will be scheduled for a later date. This case was investigated by Special Agent Nicole Tomlinson and is being prosecuted by Senior Deputy Attorney General Benjamin McKenna.
The Pennsylvania Medicaid Fraud Control Unit receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $9,133,920 for Federal fiscal year (FY) 2022. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $3,044,638 for FY 2022, is funded by Pennsylvania.
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