A Nigerian traditional ruler, Ekelekamchukwu Alphonsus Ngwadom, on Monday, January 13, sentenced to 34 months imprisonment over $70,000 Medicaid fraud involving minors in the United States (U.S).
Ekelekamchukwu, 61 years old, is a Psychotherapist and professor of Psychology and Sociology at the University of Mount Olive, North Carolina, USA.
He was crowned the king of Mbubu, Amiri Kingdom in Oru east local government area of Imo state in 2021 after the passing of his father.
U.S attorney general Jeff Jackson announced on January 13, that Ngwadom pled guilty to 27 counts of obtaining property by pretense.
Ngwadom was sentenced to 12-34 months and suspended for 36 months of supervised probation, which carried a 90-day house arrest and a payment of $72,014.66 in restitution.
“When people defraud the Medicaid program, they are stealing money from North Carolina taxpayers and from those who rely on this care. My office will not allow it, and we’re going to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to prevent fraud,” Jackson said.
Between February 18, 2020, and March 18, 2021, Ngwadom submitted $72,014.66 in fraudulent claims to Alliance Health, a North Carolina health insurance company that services state-funded plans and Medicaid, for providing behavioral health services to 27 Medicaid patients, including children, that were never provided.
Alliance Health paid Ngwadom the money; however, the integrity section of Alliance Health flagged the payment, and the attorney general’s Medicaid Integrity Division (MID) began investigating.
Ngwadom was charged on January 30, 2025, three years after a probe by the N.C department of justice and the state bureau of investigation.
The investigation began after Alliance Health, which manages public behavioral health care for multiple Triangle-area counties, reported in 2020 that one of Almarch Counseling’s clients appeared to have overlapping services from two different providers, according to a search warrant.
The parents of the minor client told investigators they’d never received services from Ngwadom or Almarch, but records showed Ngwadom had submitted 52 claims for that family’s two children between January and October 2020.
Tracy Grimes, a prosecutor for the N.C attorney general’s office, said in court that Ngwadom billed the minors for services he’d purportedly provided as part of an after-school program, but that program was not running because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He had actually met the clients while participating in the program from 2016 to 2019,” Grimes said.
“Families who spoke to investigators also reported Ngwadom would come to their house to offer services, but they would decline.
“The fraudulent billing prevented some of the children from receiving mental health services from the providers they were actually seeing.”
Ngwadom’s defense attorney, Lauren Toole, told Judge Winston Gilchrist her client made a mistake after the pandemic impacted his business.
Toole said the lost income led to his home being foreclosed on,
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