Garner man pleads guilty to more than $70K in Medicaid fraud
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- Alphonso Ngwadom pleaded guilty to 27 Medicaid fraud charges.
- Investigators found he billed minors for therapy they never received.
- Ngwadom’s business struggled and his home was foreclosed on during Covid.
A Garner man pleaded guilty Monday to 27 charges of Medicaid fraud after billing dozens of minors for therapy they never received.
Ekelekamchukwu Alphonsus Ngwadom, 61, submitted more than 200 false claims between Jan. 21, 2020, and Oct. 26, 2021, according to court documents. Ngwadom ran Almarch Counseling, a Raleigh therapy practice where the patients purportedly received therapy and other behavioral health services.
Ngwadom was charged Jan. 30, 2025, three years after a probe by the N..C. Department of Justice and the State Bureau of Investigation, court documents show.
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’d actually met the clients while participating in the program from 2016 to 2019, she said.
Families who spoke to investigators also reported Ngwadom would come to their house to offer services, but they would decline, Grimes said. The fraudulent billing prevented some of the children from receiving mental health services from the providers they were actually seeing, she added.
It’s not clear when the investigation wrapped or why there was a delay in filing charges against Ngwadom, who Grimes said provided a statement admitting to the fraud.
Ngwadom’s defense attorney, Lauren Toole, told Judge Winston Gilchrist her client made a mistake after the pandemic impacted his business. The lost income led to his home being foreclosed on, Toole said.
“He can’t take back what he did,” she said. “All he can do is try to make it right and take accountability.”
Ngwadom has taken out a second mortgage on his home to help him pay the $72,014.66 in restitution he owes to Alliance Health, according to Toole. He has also found another job, as the terms of his plea agreement forced him to surrender his professional licenses.
Ngwadom became a licensed clinical mental health counselor in North Carolina in March 2015, state records show. A LinkedIn page appearing to belong to Ngwadom said he opened Almarch in September 2015.
When asked by Gilchrist in court if he was guilty, Ngwadom shook his head several times, then paused before whispering, “Yes, sir.” But he later apologized to the court before he was sentenced.
“This is not typically who I am,” Ngwadom said, starting to cry.
As Ngwadom scrubbed at his eyes with his shirt sleeve, Gilchrist denied Grimes’ request for time in prison and gave Ngwadom a suspended sentence. If he violates the terms of his three-year probation, he’ll have to serve a minimum of a year and a maximum of three years in prison, according to the sentencing sheet.
Ngwadom must pay $45,000 of the restitution by Jan. 21, Gilchrist said. He must also complete 100 hours of community service and will be on house arrest for the first three months of his probation. If he complies with all the terms of his probation, he can be transferred to unsupervised probation after two years.
“He’s actually taking steps to try to make it right,” Toole said.
