A statewide grand jury in Rhode Island has indicted seven people, including a licensed practical nurse, on 51 counts tied to an alleged scheme to bill the state’s Medicaid program for roughly $2 million in care that prosecutors say was overstated or never provided. The Rhode Island Attorney General’s office announced the indictment Oct. 22, 2026; it was returned Oct. 19.
The case centers on U’Nique Diversity Innovations, LLC, a community health worker agency on Branch Avenue in Providence. Nitasia Burgess, 36, served as the company’s assistant director of nursing. She is one of seven defendants named in the indictment, all of whom have been charged, not convicted, and are presumed innocent unless and until a court finds otherwise.
What prosecutors allege
Shanee Vega, 44, is accused of owning the company, serving as its CEO, and acting as its sole biller. Prosecutors say Vega and employee Michael Pete, 37, generated patient notes and treatment records months after the dates the services were supposedly provided — using artificial intelligence to produce them, according to the indictment. The state alleges the agency billed Medicaid for services that were never rendered or substantially padded, falsified records to support those bills, and paid illegal kickbacks to recruit Medicaid beneficiaries into its program.
Burgess’s alleged role, as described in the charging documents, is narrower and specific to her job: prosecutors say she, Vega, and non-medical clinical director Larry Fisher, 39, created, altered, and backdated employee training certificates to make it look like UDI staff had completed training Medicaid requires before an agency can bill for their work. Vega’s daughter, Elai’sha Vega Ogiba, 28, is named as the company’s co-owner and administrator. Jerry Nicoleau, 46, and Yanelis Brown, 20, are also charged as employees; Brown is the only defendant reported to face an identity-theft count, which prosecutors say involved a child’s personal and financial information.
Charges vary by defendant and, across the indictment, include Medicaid fraud, obtaining money by false pretenses, conspiracy, identity theft, public assistance fraud, unlawful appropriation, and violations of Rhode Island’s racketeering statute.
A business that kept going after it was cut off
The state suspended UDI’s Medicaid billing privileges and payments in May 2025, following a law enforcement raid on the Branch Avenue office two months earlier, in March. Prosecutors allege that Vega, Vega Ogiba, and Burgess then formed two new businesses at that same address — conduct investigators characterize as an attempt to keep operating, and billing, under a different name after the original agency had already been flagged.
Why this matters for nurses
Most of the Medicaid fraud cases I cover involve a provider billing for care that never happened. What’s different here is the specific allegation against the nurse: not that she treated patients fraudulently, but that she helped falsify the training paperwork that was supposed to prove the agency’s aides and workers were qualified to bill for their time at all. That’s a credentialing failure as much as a billing one, and it’s exactly the kind of box-checking a director of nursing is trusted to get right. Rhode Island announced a separate, unrelated Medicaid fraud case involving seven other defendants and more than $1 million just a week before this one — a reminder that state Medicaid fraud units have been actively working this beat, not reacting to a single tip.
No defendant has entered a plea in this case as of publication. Attempts to identify attorneys for Burgess or the other defendants were not successful at the time of writing.