Greensboro woman charged in $2.8 million Medicaid fraud scheme

Federal prosecutors charged Deborah Lanell White, 54, of McLeansville, with health care fraud in connection with a multi-year scheme tied to the Reginald Center of Turn Around in Greensboro. Investigators say the business billed North Carolina Medicaid for thousands of fake urine drug tests, and the alleged losses to the state program reached about $2.8 million.

White owns the Greensboro treatment business, which remains open, leaving Guilford County with a blunt question: how did billing tied to a public health program go on long enough to expose millions in taxpayer money? In a county where Medicaid-funded behavioral health and recovery services are part of the safety net, the case reaches beyond one defendant. It goes to whether patients received the care billed in their name, whether families were directed to a provider whose claims were not legitimate, and whether warning signs were missed while the invoices kept moving.

The charge was announced as part of the Justice Department’s 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, a nationwide sweep that federal officials said brought charges against 455 defendants in 56 federal districts and 45 U.S. states and territories. The department said the effort involved more than $6.5 billion in false claims, 50 state Medicaid Fraud Control Units, 48 civil monetary penalty settlements totaling more than $73 million, 13 civil charges and 31 civil settlements totaling $23 million.

The Greensboro case lands in a local pattern that has already drawn scrutiny over urine drug testing claims. In January 2025, Substance Abuse Treatment Labs and owner Paul Fribush agreed to pay $850,000 to resolve allegations that the Greensboro laboratory billed Medicaid for medically unnecessary urine drug screening tests between January 2018 and January 2022. In April 2025, Greensboro woman Jasmine Hoyle pleaded guilty in a separate case involving health care fraud and money laundering tied to millions in fraudulent urine drug tests and office visits that were not performed.

Taken together, the cases suggest that drug-testing billing has become a repeated pressure point for Medicaid oversight in the Greensboro area. For taxpayers, the damage shows up in diverted public funds. For patients, the risk is subtler but just as serious: treatment settings built on trust can become places where billing overrides care, and where legitimate services are harder to separate from abuse.