Founder Of The Now Defunct Bluegrass Training And Therapy Center And Former State Of Kentucky Employ
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Schemed to defraud the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and the federal government, allegedly falsified attendance records and submitted over $400,000 in false claims for payment
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – United States Attorney Russell M. Coleman announced the Grand Jury Indictment, unsealed today, charging the founder and former employee of Bluegrass Training and Therapy Center, with devising a scheme to defraud the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and the federal government, and associated bribery charges.
According to the indictment, beginning no later than 2012 and continuing to September of 2015, Clifford Frank Wilkinson, a/k/a Jay Wilkinson, 61, of Louisville, and Erica Beth Bowen, 39, of Louisville, devised a scheme to defraud the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice and the federal government to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses.
Wilkinson, who was a founder, board member, and President of Bluegrass Training and Therapy Center (BTTC), and Bowen, who was an original employee of BTTC and held many positions including Program Director and secretary, falsified attendance records by inflating the number of daily participants submitted for payment to the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). This was achieved by forging the signatures of youths in the program on monthly sign-in sheets and instructing youths to falsely sign in as present at BTTC programs, when in fact they were not in attendance. The investigation uncovered over 8,000 instances when youth were not actually in attendance in programs at BTTC. In addition, BTTC by way of the scheme, fraudulently obtained over $400,000 in payments on the contracts for youth that did not attend programs at BTTC.
Further, Bowen diverted some of the funds paid from DJJ to BTTC, into personal bank accounts, and converted some of the funds to cash, for personal use by her and Wilkinson and concealed this diversion of funds through false and misleading entries in BTTC’s business and accounting records.
