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"CSSQP prompted consumer for a community outing. CSSQP talked to consumer about actions she needed to be successful in fulfilling aspirations. CSSQP discussed with consumer about having a mentor and how she felt about having a female role-model to look up to because she will have someone to help her. CSSQP discussed [with] consumer how the program will be linking her to programs and other services to help her."

For April 24, 2007, she wrote:

"CSSQP prompted consumer for a community outing. CSSQP talked to consumer about actions she needed to be successful in fulfilling aspirations. CSSQP discussed with consumer about having a mentor and how she felt about having a female role-model to look up to because she will have someone to help her. CSSQP discussed [with] consumer how the program will be linking her to programs and other services to help her." This section of the note was identical to the previous day's, except for the last sentence: "CSSQP discussed with [consumer] some activities that needed to change in her life."

The state wants Dominion to pay back $1.5 million, and state and local mental-health offices are trying to strip the company of its licenses to bill Medicaid.

An administrative law judge said the state can't act until the company runs through its appeals. Hopkins has hired well-known trial lawyer Willie Gary to sue the state, one of its contractors and several local mental-health offices for $1.3 billion. Dominion claims the counties are discriminating against the company because its owners are African-American.

Hopkins, 39, is best known as NBA star Tracy McGrady's high school coach. He coached at Durham's Mount Zion Christian Academy for eight years and at Shaw University for two years. Dominion is an extension of his long-held desire to help children, Hopkins said.

In the early 1990s, law enforcement agencies around the Southeast investigated a nonprofit organization Hopkins ran with his brother, John. Triangle Housing/Homeless and its spinoffs used poor children and homeless people to canvass for donations.

Dominion was incorporated by a church that never existed, Hopkins acknowledges. The incorporation papers listed the incorporator as Dominion Christian Church, with the address of a home in Bahama in northern Durham County. Hopkins said he intended to start the church, but he didn't.

Troubled history

Before it found gold in community support, Dominion ran youth group homes in Wake County. The state sanctioned the company for not doing enough to keep children from running away and for failing to conduct criminal background checks of employees.

One of Dominion's state directors, Jerry Wright, was convicted in 2002 of 10 counts of obtaining property under false pretenses after a Medicaid fraud investigation into his work at Lutheran Family Services. Wright, a former foster parent supervisor there, was ordered to pay $25,021 in restitution.

Hopkins defended hiring Wright, who he said does not handle money at Dominion.

In the past 14 months, state and local mental-health offices' investigations and reviews of Dominion's practices and patient records found billing problems, people getting community support who did not need it and the company charging for work it didn't do.

About a year ago, investigators called Dominion patients in the Charlotte area. One of the complaints was that Dominion was offering community support as a mentoring service.

In calls to 11 patients or their guardians, investigators found that eight did not know they were receiving a mental-health service and did not know what their diagnosis was. Ten of 11 did not know that community support is a mental-health service.

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