A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has indicted the co-owner of a Richmond-area mental health agency in what prosecutors describe as a $49 million Medicaid fraud scheme, and she was arrested on Wednesday, October 28. Mikia Antoneice Noble, 37, of North Chesterfield, Virginia, is charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and three counts of health care fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. The indictment was returned on October 20.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Noble was the co-owner and chief operating officer of Advancing Communities Everywhere LLC, known as ACE, a mental health provider in the Richmond area. She also claimed to work as a mental health professional for the company. ACE said it provided care to people experiencing acute or significant behavioural health crises — but, prosecutors allege, it did not provide those services as billed.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
First, billing for teams that were not there. The indictment alleges Noble conspired with her co-owner to bill Virginia Medicaid for crisis services supposedly provided by teams of mental health professionals including a trained and licensed professional, when in fact the services were provided only by a single, low-level, less qualified worker — while Medicaid was charged as if the full team had attended.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Second, buying patients with hotel rooms. Prosecutors allege the co-owners paid more than $2 million for hotel room rentals that were offered to Medicaid beneficiaries to illegally induce them to allow ACE to bill for services the beneficiaries did not actually need. Federal law treats offering something of value to steer a patient into billing a government health program as an illegal inducement.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Third, signatures that were not real. The indictment alleges medical records were falsified by adding the signatures of licensed professionals who had not actually participated in the crisis services — and by adding Noble's own signature falsely representing that she had participated, when in fact she was out of the country. Prosecutors also allege she lied to the Medicaid managed care organizations that were auditing ACE's crisis services.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
In total, from January 2022 through April 2026, Noble allegedly participated in submitting more than $49 million in false and fraudulent claims to Virginia Medicaid, the Justice Department says.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
An earlier court filing lays out the government's case in more detail. A criminal information filed on June 18, 2026, in Richmond federal court (United States v. Noble, No. 3:26-cr-00069) says ACE billed Medicaid more than $49.6 million between January 2022 and January 2026 for Community Stabilization and Mobile Crisis services involving thousands of recipients, and that Medicaid paid about $38.6 million. It says the agency billed Medicaid's higher "Team Treatment" rate on at least 93 percent of its Community Stabilization claims and at least 98 percent of its Mobile Crisis claims.
Source: The Digital Free Press, from federal court documents
The June filing gives specific examples: it says that on September 14, 2023, Noble signed a progress note claiming she had taken part in a Mobile Crisis session in person while she was on an international flight from the Cayman Islands to Atlanta, and that on August 13, 2023, she signed notes for about ten Community Stabilization sessions, several of which overlapped in time. It also alleges Noble personally received at least about $2 million from the Medicaid payments and spent fraud proceeds on travel and luxury clothing, shoes and jewelry.
Source: The Digital Free Press, from federal court documents
The charges now filed are conspiracy to commit health care fraud and three counts of health care fraud. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if she is convicted, the Justice Department says — a theoretical maximum of 40 years across the four counts, though actual federal sentences are set by the court under sentencing guidelines.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Theophani K. Stamos for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Special Agent in Charge Ian Kaufmann of the FBI's Richmond Field Office. The FBI Richmond Field Office and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Virginia Attorney General's office are investigating. Trial Attorneys Lauren Randell and Zachary H. Ray of the Fraud Division's Health Care Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert S. Day are prosecuting.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Part of a much larger national crackdown on health care fraud
The case lands inside a broad federal push against fraud in government benefit programs. The Justice Department says its Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program — nine strike forces across the country — has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since 2007. On April 7, the department announced a new Fraud Division focused on fraud against the public, supporting a White House task force chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in federal benefit programs.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
For Virginia families, the stakes are practical as well as financial: Medicaid crisis services exist for people in acute mental-health emergencies, and every dollar billed for a service that was never properly delivered is a dollar — and a care slot — taken from a system that is chronically short of both. Prosecutors have not alleged that any specific patient was harmed, and Awaaz Punjab is not aware of any such allegation in the filings reported so far.
An indictment is merely an allegation. Mikia Noble is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, as the Justice Department itself states. The same presumption covers every factual claim in the indictment and the June filing until a court tests them.
What happens next: the case will proceed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, where an arraignment and scheduling are expected to follow the arrest. The October indictment supersedes the procedural path of the June information, under which a plea hearing had at one point been set for July 14 and then postponed, according to the court docket reporting. Whether the unnamed co-owner — identified in the June filing only as a co-conspirator — will also be charged has not been announced.
Source: The Digital Free Press, from federal court documents