(Photo by Krisanapong Detraphiphat/Getty Images)
It’s not a Monty Python joke.
Prosecutors with the Alaska Department of Law’s Office of Special Prosecutions have filed seven criminal felony charges against The Knights of Ni LLC and its owner, Ryan Carroll, accusing Caroll of defrauding the state’s Medicaid system of more than $500,000.
Online court records did not list an attorney for Carroll, who could not be reached for comment.
Records published by Alaska’s division of corporate, business and professional licensing show that The Knights of Ni LLC was involuntarily dissolved in 2024 after failing to meet the requirements to keep operating. A record from 2022 shows Carroll as owning 100% of the company. The Knights of Ni is an apparent reference to the 1975 film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
The Department of Law declined to comment on the case.
According to the criminal complaint, which was filed in Anchorage Superior Court on Oct. 23, the state charges came after an investigation by the Alaska Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which operates under the Department of Law.
According to an investigator with the unit, Carroll operated as a care coordinator. A care coordinator is someone who helps a Medicaid patient gain “needed medical, social and other services, regardless of the funding source for the services to which access is granted,” according to court filings.
Care coordinators typically work with people who are mentally or physically disabled and cannot fill out paperwork on their own. Under state law and regulation, a care coordinator can be paid by the Alaska Department of Health for their work if they document their patient visits and submit a report to the state.
According to the criminal complaint, the Department of Health received a message warning that Carroll “was having an inappropriate relationship with one of his … clients.”
That prompted an investigation which found Carroll had missed several reports that could have caused as many as 19 Alaskans to lose health care. Further review discovered Carroll “documenting that he was providing monthly care coordination contacts to more than one client on the same date, time, but at different locations.”
In many cases, state investigators found Carroll had not submitted the proper forms to bill Medicaid, and in some cases, “it was not clear whether Carroll was making any contact with his assigned recipients due to the lack of documentation to support his services.”
Based on a review, “there was a total of $519,855.73 worth of claims between 2018 and 2022 that did not have sufficient documentation,” the complaint states.
The case has not yet been assigned to a judge, and a preliminary arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 21 in Anchorage.
