Worker at Hochul’s hand-picked CDPAP payment firm allegedly siphons off cash meant for participants

ALBANY – A worker with the firm at the center of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s scandal-plagued Medicaid homecare program allegedly siphoned off cash from potentially thousands of participants.

The employee of Public Partnerships, LLC — the company hand-picked by Hochul’s administration to act as the sole payment go-between for the state and participants in the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program — had been falsifying the direct-deposit information of up to 10,000 participants, sources told The Post.

The New York program pays for people to take care of disabled or elderly loved ones and recently hired the company to eliminate the loads of middlemen payment firms and instead funnel everything through it.

The company discovered last week that one of its employees was directing homecare participants’ paychecks to fraudulent bank accounts, including some overseas, sources said.

“There was an agent who worked on the phones who got fired a week ago, who was misdirecting direct deposits to the wrong accounts and sending money to offshore accounts as well,” a PPL employee told The Post.

The source said the FBI was involved, though a rep for the federal agency would not confirm the existence of an investigation when asked by The Post on Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how many assistants have been impacted by the breach, but the number could be upwards of 10,000 people, sources said.

It also is not clear how long the scheme has been going on or exactly how much Medicaid cash has been lost, though the figure could feasibly reach hundreds of thousands of dollars since PPL began paying assistants in April.

“It just keeps getting worse,” a PPL worker said of the massive turmoil surrounding Hochul’s attempt to consolidate hundreds of payroll middlemen companies under one firm.

A rep for PPL confirmed to The Post that an employee was “terminated for not following the approved procedures” and is being “investigated” but did not comment further, including to refute the allegations.

Hochul’s office did not comment on the allegations that funds were being siphoned into fraudulent bank accounts.

The alleged theft is only the latest scandal to taint the program.

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The firm has already been dealing with a phishing scam using phony Google Ads to target participants into coughing up their personal information, though it says none of its systems have been compromised.

“We have confirmed that fewer than 100 [personal assistants] out of more than 225,000 across New York State were victimized by this scam,” PPL said in a statement. “We will ensure that every PA is reimbursed for any lost wages.”

The governor’s office said PPL notified the state of the phishing scam and that it was proof that the move to consolidate the firms was working.

“When PPL reported a recent phishing scam, the State ensured PPL took action to address it,” Hochul spokesperson Sam Spokony wrote in a statement to The Post.

“This immediate review and response would not have been possible under the old CDPAP system, which was plagued by hundreds of wasteful middlemen.”

But Hochul also has been under intense scrutiny from critics on both sides of the political aisle who’ve accused the state of rigging the bid for PPL and ramming through the transition on an unrealistic timeline, amongst other complaints.

The Post was first to report that serious career prosecutors from the DOJ’s Consumer Affairs Branch are investigating PPL and the CDPAP transition.

Earlier this month, the state reached a legal settlement with the New York Legal Assistance group to push back a deadline for people to register with the new firm.

The company source said they believe PPL’s president, Maria Perrin, is taking the fall for the breach after she announced her resignation internally over the weekend.

“I think they needed someone to take the fall for that, and Maria happened to be handy, and she just resigned, she’s gone,” the employee said.

A company rep denied that Perrin’s departure had anything to do with the data breaches.

Perrin’s departure comes amid a slough of resignations at the top of echelons of the private-equity-owned firm’s ranks. PPL’s head honcho, CEO Vince Coppola, resigned last week, the Albany Times Union said.

The Post’s well-placed PPL source said Executive Vice President Vicente Armendariz, who helped lead the New York transition, resigned within the past month.

The company rep did not comment on Armendariz.

“With the CDPAP transition nearing completion and the operation entering a steady state, Maria is confident that PPL is prepared to succeed when she exits in the fall,” a PPL representative told Politico, which was first to report her resignation Monday.

The governor’s office and the state Department of Health have been defending the firm for months, claiming that as recently as May 15, 98% of 198,000 fully-onboarded CDPAP assistants at the time had submitted timecards and received paychecks.

But Ilana Berger, political director of Caring Majority Rising, a group that has fought to reverse the transition, wrote in a blistering statement. “Between this breach and a leadership exodus, it’s clear PPL is in complete chaos.

“A competent organization would have had systems in place to immediately address a security issue like this – instead, PPL has made a bad situation significantly worse, creating widespread confusion for workers and consumers who depend on CDPAP for their wages and care. This is yet another glaring sign that PPL is fundamentally unfit for the job.“