In middle schools and high schools across Los Angeles County, Atlantic Recovery Services offered some hope: a free, government-funded treatment program for children coping with drug and alcohol addiction.
But prosecutors alleged this week that the Long Beach-based program was set up to exploit children and defraud taxpayers, with supervisors telling staffers to forge student signatures, falsify treatment records, and enroll students who may have merely dabbled in drugs, even once.
Eight employees of the now-defunct drug treatment company have been charged in a decade-long scheme that netted more than $46 million from California’s Medi-Cal program, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.