PHOENIX — "I was a functioning alcoholic," Kimberly Liston said, "until I couldn't function anymore."
Liston, a Navajo tribal member, was a single mom pregnant with a second child and at the end of her rope. She needed treatment but was hesitant.
"That was one of the reasons I didn't want to go to treatment because I didn't want to be separated from my kids," Liston said.
She found Nicole Mitchell and ICAN Healthcare and Services. Mitchell told Liston her family could stay together, and she would help them find a place to live and ways to pay for it while Liston got sober.
"She said 'you'll be fine, you'll be with your children, you'll be able to not have that stress of trying to figure out how you're going to pay rent, I can help you with that.'"
That was how Mitchell said she operated ICAN. She said she has 24 families as clients.
"I decided to do families only because the kids need a safe and healthy environment," Mitchell said.
She set up to primarily treat Native Americans through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS. She said that license is the first and the easiest to get approved for.
In May, she received a Credible Allegation of Fraud letter, telling her she had been cut off from billing the AHCCCS system. AHCCCS was accusing her of fraud. The letter explained the AHCCCS suspected her of overbilling on behalf of her clients and billing for more than 24 hours in a day.
Mitchell said she doesn't know what happened.
"They just sent us a letter and had us start reaching out looking for answers," Mitchell said. "I don't know how I got caught up in it. I can't tell you. I know that we didn't do anything wrong."
ICAN is one of more than 100 treatment centers that have been suspended. Some are accused of billing for dead people. Others are accused of not providing treatment at all and simply transporting Native Americans off the reservation and leaving them in the Valley.
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One treatment center allegedly set their clients up in a motel in Eloy, while claiming to provide them rehab services in Glendale. That motel has since been shut down and the treatment center placed on the suspension list.
Mitchell's case is currently going through the court process. But as it does, the funding that paid for treatment for clients like Liston is cut off. And with it, the money for the housing Mitchell said she found them.
"The problem is now... there's no resources available, so the clients are going to lose all their housing," Mitchell said.
Mitchell said she's been calling the state hotline set up to deal with the fallout of the multi-million-dollar fraud investigation. But calling 211, she said, doesn't help.
After talking to 12News, Mitchell called 211 again, looking to help find homes for some of her clients. The operator told her there were emergency shelters for families, but that they were temporary. The operator also told her they would have to call a meeting among the management to figure out what to do with so many families, but that each client would have to call individually to be screened before finding a place for them.
Mitchell said it was the farthest she's ever gotten, but hung up without answers.
The Department of Health Services referred 12News to AHCCCS and Solari, the company that runs the 211 hotline for answers to our questions.
12News asked AHCCCS specific questions about how many housing spots there were, how many were filled and how many were for families. The agency did not answer our questions.
Solari didn't respond by the time of this posting.
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