Like we reported in June, a Corvallis woman who ran a local day support program for Medicaid recipients is facing more than 20 criminal charges after allegedly billing the state for services her company never delivered. On Wednesday, July 29, she pleaded not guilty.
Linda Sue Thomas, and her now-dissolved company, Gateway of Willamette Valley, stand accused of pocketing over $40,000 in Medicaid payments for care that, according to investigators, simply didn’t happen.
The numbers add up fast: Thomas alone faces 14 counts, including aggravated first-degree theft and first-degree theft, plus multiple counts of making false claims for healthcare payment. Gateway, the company, is named in seven more counts on its own.
This isn’t an isolated case. Attorney General Dan Rayfield rolled announced the charges against Thomas in late June as part of a broader sweep targeting healthcare fraud across the state. The case has landed with an assistant attorney general from the DOJ, deputized to prosecute locally.
Gateway had been around since 2016, according to state business filings, before quietly dissolving in March of last year — right around the time the allegations started surfacing.
The company’s pitch was day support services; getting Medicaid recipients out of their care homes and into structured activities. Court documents describe a simpler reality behind the scenes — billing for days when clients weren’t actually showing up.
The scheme unraveled after a coordinator with Benton County’s Developmental Diversity Division flagged the discrepancies to the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. When investigators sat down with Thomas, she didn’t fight it — she admitted to the fraudulent billing outright, telling them she’d done it to avoid laying off staff, according to the affidavit.
Thomas is out on a conditional release. The case moves forward Sept. 8, when she’s due back in court.
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