Preferred Family Healthcare Inc.
Outcome
Bontiea and Tom Goss, executives of Preferred Family Healthcare Inc., pleaded guilty September 2022 to conspiring to pay bribes and kickbacks to elected Arkansas public officials; the charity separately agreed to $8 million in forfeiture and restitution; multiple Arkansas legislators also pleaded guilty in related cases.
Details
Preferred Family Healthcare Inc. — Bribery of Arkansas Officials, Multi-State Fraud (approx. 2014–2019)
Outcome: Bontiea Goss pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay bribes and kickbacks to Arkansas officials (up to 5 years); Tom Goss pleaded guilty to conspiracy, embezzlement, bribery, and false tax returns (up to 8 years); Preferred Family Healthcare agreed to $8 million in forfeiture and restitution; multiple Arkansas legislators also pleaded guilty in related proceedings.
Preferred Family Healthcare Inc. was a large nonprofit behavioral and physical health services organization based in Springfield, Missouri operating in multiple states including Arkansas. Executive couple Bontiea Bernedette Goss and Tommy Ray Goss orchestrated a multi-year scheme in which the charity paid bribes and kickbacks to elected Arkansas public officials in exchange for favorable government contracts and funding. Tom Goss additionally embezzled from the organization and aided in filing false tax returns.
The corruption extended broadly: multiple Arkansas state legislators and state officials pleaded guilty in related cases, establishing that the scheme involved systematic corruption of Arkansas state government through a nominally charitable organization. The charity was required to pay $8 million in total forfeiture and restitution.
The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation, FBI, and prosecuted in the Western District of Arkansas. The Springfield, Missouri organization's use of political corruption to secure state behavioral health contracts illustrates how government-contracted nonprofits can exploit their public service positioning to engage in bribery structures that undermine the integrity of state health services procurement.
Primary Source: Former Missouri Health Care Charity Executives Plead Guilty to Multimillion-Dollar Bribery and Embezzlement Scheme
How Crucible Prevents This
Preferred Family Healthcare's bribery scheme—paying kickbacks to Arkansas legislators to secure state contracts—is the archetypal government-contracting nonprofit fraud. Crucible's vendor and government-relations controls would require disclosure of all communications with elected officials related to funding decisions, flagging payments that coincide with contract awards as potential kickbacks requiring independent review. Mandatory independent auditing of government-contract-receiving nonprofits with Arkansas state connections would have surfaced the $4.3M forfeiture amount years earlier.
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