Three Montana women charged in Medicaid fraud cases totaling over $1.3 million

Three Montana women are facing felony charges after investigators uncovered more than $1.3 million in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements spanning three cities and multiple healthcare facilities.

The Montana Department of Justice's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigated all three cases, which share a common thread: healthcare providers billing Medicaid for services that were never performed or never legally eligible for reimbursement in the first place.

Victoria Jean Davenport, 60, faces five felony counts: two counts of Medicaid fraud, two counts of false claims to a public agency and one count of tampering with evidence. 

Davenport holds licenses as both an addiction counselor and a clinical professional counselor. She owns and operates The GYST House, a substance abuse facility for women, and The GYST House 2, a similar facility for men, as well as Enlightening Minds, an outpatient behavioral health clinic. She also serves as clinical director of Solara Mental Health Center. 

All four facilities are in Great Falls.

According to court documents, none of her three facilities hold mental health center licenses, meaning none were legally permitted to bill Medicaid for services provided by unlicensed staff. 

The investigation began in August 2025 after the Department of Public Health and Human Services' Medicaid surveillance program flagged unusual activity. 

Investigators interviewed four former employees who described a pattern of fraud: unlicensed staff wrote session notes that Davenport signed as her own, all staff shared her provider account to make it appear she was personally delivering care and claims were submitted for services that never took place.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Davenport was out of the country for more than 200 claims where she was listed as the treating provider, according to court documents. 

Auditors identified nearly 70 additional claims written by staff who were neither licensed nor in the process of becoming licensed, each one of them signed by Davenport. 

In one case, an unlicensed University of Montana practicum student provided therapy to clients without any supervision at all.

When investigators served Davenport a subpoena in February, she signed over 1,000 progress notes in five days, many documenting sessions from two to five years earlier. 

In all, Davenport submitted more than $2.3 million in fraudulent Medicaid claims and received more than $1.2 million. 

More than 200 miles away, a similar scheme played out at Beautiful Directions Counseling in Billings. The facility’s owner, Alison Fay Watt, 55, faces one felony count of Medicaid fraud and one felony count of false claims to a public agency.

Like Davenport, Watt is a licensed clinical professional counselor and addiction counselor. And like Davenport's facilities, Beautiful Directions Counseling has never held a mental health facility license, meaning it was never legally permitted to bill Medicaid for services provided by interns or licensure candidates. 

According to court documents, unlicensed staff provided therapy, mental health evaluations and addiction assessments to clients, then billed those sessions under the business's Medicaid provider number. 

The investigation began in March 2025 after the Montana Medicaid Fraud Hotline received an anonymous tip from an intern. Staff members later described working almost entirely without oversight. 

One unlicensed staff member said Watt would simply "check in on her every now and then.” Another said her individual therapy sessions with clients were never once supervised by a licensed therapist, court documents state. 

In one instance, Watt allegedly instructed the mother of a client to lie to Montana Medicaid about which provider had treated her child.

Between January 2024 and August 2025, Watt submitted nearly $250,000 in Medicaid claims for 138 clients whose care was provided by unlicensed staff, according to court documents. She received about $130,000 from the claims. 

The cases come as Montana already struggles to meet mental healthcare demand. According to the Department of Public Health and Human Services, more than 770,000 Montanans — roughly 65% of the state's population — live in areas with inadequate access to mental health resources.

Davenport and Watt are part of 10 active prosecutions initiated by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, a nine-member team inside the Montana Department of Justice. Every state and three territories have Medicaid Fraud Control Units. Montana’s was created in 1995. 

Jacob Griffith, the unit’s director, testified on Tuesday before a legislative budget committee that the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit’s investigations have already yielded four convictions this year, resulting in almost $46,000 in restitution. 

Griffith said two additional defendants are set to change their plea later this year, which will amount to another $647,000 in restitution. 

Laural Suydam, 46, of Helena, has already been convicted of theft after submitting fraudulent documentation for in-home care she never provided.

Suydam worked as a personal care attendant for A Plus Healthcare, assisting a Montana Medicaid recipient in their home. Electronic visit verification records, which use GPS to confirm a caregiver's location, placed her somewhere other than the patient's residence on those dates, according to a Department of Justice press release. 

She also submitted documentation for a day when the patient was incarcerated and could not have received care at all.

The total fraud came to around $3,800. Suydam was sentenced to three years suspended to the Montana Department of Corrections, ordered to pay full restitution and barred from working as a healthcare provider or personal care attendant for three years.

Davenport and Watt are both scheduled to be arraigned in Lewis and Clark County District Court on Tuesday morning. Assistant Attorney General Alexandra van Belle is prosecuting the cases.