A Chicago-based staffing company has agreed to pay almost $3 million to the state of Colorado to settle accusations it overcharged the Colorado Department of Corrections for inmate health care.
The Colorado Attorney General's Office announced the settlement Friday.
The AG's office accused Quality Placement Authority, LLC, of breaching its 2018 contract with the CDOC and violating the Colorado False Claims Act, a bill passed by the state legislature and signed into law in 2022.
"When companies do business with the state, we expect them to play by the rules and live up to their obligations," Colorado AG Phil Weiser stated in a press release announcing the settlement. "The Colorado False Claims Act gives us a powerful tool to protect taxpayer dollars, recover public funds when they are misused, and deter fraud against the state."
Specifically, the staffing and recruiting firm knowingly submitted "hundreds of invoices" to the CDOC "for thousands of shifts" covered by local health care providers it sent to state prisons for inmate health care. According to the settlement agreement, the company created fake home addresses of the health care providers to increase billable travel time to the prisons.
Two examples were provided in the settlement agreement: In one, a health care provider was allegedly told by a QPA recruiter that he wouldn't qualify for a higher travel rate because "he only lived 128 miles away" from the prison.
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