Judge awards State of Nebraska nearly $800,000 in Medicaid fraud case

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — A former Lincoln-area Medicaid provider will have to pay for filing false claims with Nebraska Medicaid.

Attorney General Mike Hilgers announced Friday that his office won a lawsuit against the provider, saying the state would get nearly $800,000 in damages.

The two owners of Love Community LLC — Devon Gibbs and her husband, Christoph Gibbs — contracted with service providers who housed eligible Medicaid clients.

But at least one of those service providers was not properly enrolled with Medicaid and was not affiliated with Love Community, as required by Nebraska Medicaid regulations.

The state says Love Community also billed for services performed by a different Medicaid provider and failed to provide documentation of what services Love Community or its contractors actually provided.

Love Community submitted false claims to Nebraska Medicaid and was improperly paid $221,418.69 for those claims, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

On Thursday, a Lancaster County District Court judge entered a judgment against Devon Gibbs for $664,256.07, triple restitution for what she was paid by Nebraska Medicaid.

The court also ordered her to pay $115,029.98 in interest.

The court previously entered default judgments against Christoph Gibbs and Love Community when they failed to respond to the lawsuit.

Devon Gibbs was also charged with four counts of felony income tax evasion and one count of filing a fraudulent return in April 2023.

That case is still pending.