Woman ordered to pay millions in Las Vegas Medicaid fraud case

A Las Vegas judge on Monday ordered a jail sentence and payment of $7.5 million in restitution and costs for a woman who admitted to Medicaid fraud.

Ariell Dix, 38, pleaded guilty last month to counts of Medicaid fraud, attempted racketeering and obtaining and using the personal identifying information of an older person for an unlawful purpose.

“Dix willfully and brazenly exploited a program intended to provide care and dignity to Nevada’s most vulnerable citizens,” said Attorney General Aaron Ford in a statement. “Such deliberate fraud is not only a betrayal of public trust and a theft from taxpayers, but it also strips resources from those in need. My office has zero tolerance for Medicaid fraud and will relentlessly pursue and prosecute offenders to the fullest extent of the law.”

District Judge Maria Gall sentenced Dix to probation with 364 days in the Clark County Detention Center and ordered her to pay $6 million in restitution and $1.5 million to the Nevada attorney general’s office for costs.

The defendant, defense attorney Chris Rasmussen and Senior Deputy Attorney General Behnaz Molina offered no statements to the court.

Dix is an inmate in the Arizona prison system, where she is serving another sentence for Medicaid fraud, Rasmussen said previously.

Her sentence in Nevada will follow the time she is incarcerated in Arizona, Gall ruled.

Rasmussen has said other defendants are involved in the case, too.

“What they’re admitting to doing is opening up care facilities, behavioral service facilities, and billing more than they should have been billed and billing for patients that didn’t get the type of treatment that was outlined in the billing,” he said.

Dix was previously convicted of Medicaid fraud in Nevada in 2020, according to the attorney general’s office.

She was prohibited from enrolling as a provider but “continued her fraudulent activities by using ‘straw owners’ to establish new companies while secretly managing operations and overseeing fraudulent billing practices,” prosecutors said in a news release.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.