Prosecutors say a Salt Lake City woman built fake “sober living homes” and recruited homeless people to help her bill Utah Medicaid for therapy that was never actually provided. A federal grand jury in Salt Lake City indicted Jazzamin Tashay Clark, 43, on August 26, 2026, on charges of health care fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Clark has not been convicted, and the charges against her remain allegations that a court has not yet tested, a distinction that matters given how much of the case rests on paperwork rather than an admission.
More Than $4 Million in Claims for Therapy Never Rendered
According to the indictment, Clark ran her alleged scheme from July 2024 through October 2025, defrauding Medicaid to obtain money for her own financial benefit. She is accused of establishing businesses in Salt Lake City that purported to treat people facing substance use disorder, then recruiting Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries, often people experiencing homelessness, and claiming to provide them with services Medicaid would reimburse. Prosecutors say the claims Clark caused Medicaid to submit were for therapy and other services that either were never rendered at all, were rendered by unqualified or unlicensed providers, or were not eligible for reimbursement in the first place. Utah Medicaid ended up paying Clark more than $4 million based on those claims.
As part of the alleged scheme, Clark rented houses in West Valley City and elsewhere that she described as “sober living homes.” Rather than helping residents maintain sobriety, prosecutors say those homes left Medicaid beneficiaries struggling with substance abuse to fend for themselves.
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Billing Under Other Providers’ Stolen Identifiers
Medicaid claims must include a National Provider Identifier, or NPI, for the health care provider who ordered, supervised, or performed the billed service. The indictment alleges Clark billed Medicaid under NPI numbers belonging to several out-of-state providers who were not qualified to perform the services in question and, in many cases, did not even know their identifiers were being used this way. That detail is central to the fraud allegation: it means the paperwork behind the claims pointed to real, licensed providers who prosecutors say had nothing to do with the services actually billed. For Medicaid’s claims system, an NPI is supposed to function like a signature confirming a qualified professional actually stood behind the care billed; using someone else’s number without their knowledge, as alleged here, defeats that safeguard without the provider or the program necessarily noticing until an investigation is already underway.
What Happens Next in Federal Court
Clark’s initial appearance on the indictment is scheduled for September 9, 2026, at 1 p.m. before a U.S. magistrate judge at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse in Salt Lake City. U.S. Attorney Melissa Holyoak for the District of Utah said her office “remains firmly committed to pursuing individuals who attempt to steal from taxpayer funded programs,” crediting the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office, the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Utah Attorney General’s Office, and IRS Criminal Investigation for their work on the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark Y. Hirata and Sachi J. Jepson, along with Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kaye Lynn Wooton, are prosecuting the case for the District of Utah.
The indictment follows the Justice Department’s creation of a National Fraud Enforcement Division in April 2026, a unit that consolidated existing fraud sections into the Department’s first litigating division built specifically to investigate and prosecute fraud against taxpayer-funded programs. That reorganization supports a broader White House effort to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in federal benefit programs, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. Medicaid, which Clark is accused of defrauding, is jointly funded by federal and state dollars and administered in Utah by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services alongside the federal Department of Health and Human Services, meaning a scheme like the one alleged against Clark draws on both state and federal money.
Utah’s U.S. Attorney’s Office has separately opened a fraud prevention initiative aimed at protecting older Utahns from scams, run out of the same office that is now prosecuting Clark’s case. The overlap reflects how Medicaid fraud investigations and elder-focused fraud prevention work often draw on the same federal and state investigative teams, even when, as in Clark’s case, the alleged victims are not older adults but a program that many older and disabled Utahns rely on for coverage.
No trial date has been set, and the case is at its earliest stage, with Clark’s initial appearance still nearly two weeks away as of this writing. Utah Medicaid beneficiaries who worked with a substance-abuse treatment provider or lived in a purported sober living home tied to the businesses described in the indictment have not been named as targets of any investigation themselves; the charges are directed at Clark’s alleged billing conduct, not at the beneficiaries who were recruited into the program.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
