Indicted for alleged health care fraud, the Grants Pass disability support company Rever Grand has asked a judge to toss the charges as overly vague and unconstitutional.
The case is closely watched. Rever Grand has grown to become a prominent business that contracts with workers called direct support professionals to provide care and help to people with intellectual or developmental disabilities around the state. Its management has maintained an aggressive public profile, boasting of high pay for its non-unionized workforce.
Service Employees International Union has accused Rever Grand of using questionable practices to obtain state payments that support its high wages. Rever Grand’s cofounders face similar charges and the company is pushing back against the accusations as the state Department of Human Services threatens to cut payments for 8,000 direct support professionals, according to The Rogue Valley Times.
Rever Grand marketing manager Christopher Culpepper provided The Lund Report with a statement saying “rumors” are causing “confusion and uncertainty” amongst the intellectual and developmental disabilities community in Oregon.
“We are aware there are misperceptions about the charges filed against the Company,” according to the statement. “Rever Grand recognizes there are questions regarding the charges, which do not allege Medicaid fraud.”
A grand jury in Josephine County indicted the company last month on a dozen counts of making a false claim for a health care payment. The indictment, first reported by The Rogue Valley Times, alleges that an employee of Rever Grand submitted false claims to the Department of Human Services for reimbursement of services.
The document is light on details and does not specify what program the company was allegedly trying to defraud. However, it claims that the employee “did unlawfully, knowingly, and with the intent to obtain a health care payment to which defendant was not entitled, conceal from and fail to disclose to the Department of Human services, a health care payor, the existence of information.”
Rever Grand attorney Neil Evans, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in the company’s filing that the indictment does not add up to a crime because the law that Oregon Department of Justice attorneys are using to charge the company “fails to provide fair notice and is unconstitutionally vague,” violating the respective free speech and due process protections in the state and federal Constitutions.
“In sum, people are constitutionally entitled to fair notice of what constitutes criminal behavior, particularly when the criminal behavior involves a failure to act,” he wrote.
The Oregon Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Lund Report.
The law state prosecutors are using against Rever Grand makes it a crime for someone to seek a health care payment while not disclosing information showing they are not entitled to it.
However, Evans wrote that other Oregon criminal laws criminalize people for something they have done, not something they did not do. The law does not specify when a person would need to make the disclosure, he argued, and the way it is written gives too much discretion to a prosecutor, judge and jury to figure out how it should be applied.
“To avoid violating (the law), a person must make a disclosure, but the statute does not set forth any circumstances that would notify a person of their duty to act or provide any guidance as to the potential source of that duty,” Evans wrote.
The law prosecutors are using against the Rever Grand also violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections by compelling them to speak, Evans wrote.
The case against Rever Grand, including its cofounders, Jolene Sesso and Raymond Parenteau, is scheduled for a status check hearing on Sept. 26.
