A former assisted living community Medicaid coordinator pleaded guilty to defrauding multiple Connecticut companies out of more than $360,000 through similar fraud schemes as she moved from job to job.

Marlenin Vito, Medicaid coordinator at an assisted living community in Stamford, CT, pleaded guilty in New Haven federal court last month to wire fraud stemming from multiple fraud schemes at the assisted living community, an alarm company and a law firm.

Vito was responsible for helping residents apply for nursing home-level Medicaid reimbursements, monitoring resident’s trust accounts and ensuring compliance with Medicaid regulations. She also kept journal entries for residents’ trust accounts, to credit them when funds were received and to debit those accounts when payments were made on behalf of residents.

From December 2019 to May 2021, Vito allegedly defrauded the community and its residents by generating checks from the company system, forging a fellow employee’s signature, and funneling payments to her personal account. Vito then made false accounting ledger entries, according to the Department of Justice. In some cases, Vito allegedly canceled residents’ supplemental health insurance coverage but continued to deduct funds from their accounts to cover those costs and use the funds for personal purposes. She also is accused of funneling residents’ COVID-19 stimulus payments to herself.

According to the DOJ, many residents at the assisted living community were not healthy enough or mentally capable of tracking their own expenses or monitoring their account balances.

During the alleged scheme, the DOJ reported, Vita fraudulently negotiated 500 checks totaling $310,800. When confronted by family members, she reportedly created false account statements that misrepresented the balances in resident trust accounts. 

After she was fired from her position at the assisted living community, Vito became a bookkeeper and scheduler at an alarm company in White Plains, NY, where she allegedly made false representations about overtime pay for herself and her daughter, and she reportedly used company funds to order more than $10,000 worth of products that were delivered to her home. The DOJ alleged that Vito defrauded the alarm company of $24,000.

Upon losing her job at the alarm company, the DOJ said, Vito became a bookkeeper at a law firm in Hartford. There, she allegedly took fraudulently generated checks from the company’s bank account and forged the signature of an authorized employee on those checks. She then recorded the fraudulently negotiated checks as petty cash, stealing $27,000, according to the DOJ.

A federal grand jury returned a 17-count indictment on wire fraud and bank fraud charges against Vita in October 2024 tied to the assisted living and law firm fraud schemes. Vito pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for it. She was released on a $25,000 bond pending sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 10.

The case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Stamford Police Department, Hartford Police Department, Ridgefield Police Department and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office.