Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has announced a settlement of just over $710,000 with a now-defunct autism services provider and its owner, resolving allegations that the two billed the state’s Medicaid program for autism treatment that, according to the state, simply never happened.
The provider is Trading Spaces ABA, LLC, formerly an autism specialty group based in Glastonbury, and its sole owner, Glenroy Patterson. The total settlement figure is $710,815.34, and it resolves claims brought under the Connecticut False Claims Act.
What the State Alleged
The allegations center on billing conduct between January 2017 and December 2021. During that stretch, Patterson was licensed and enrolled in the Connecticut Medical Assistance Program — which includes the state’s Medicaid program — as a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst, and he owned Trading Spaces outright.
The state’s civil lawsuit alleged that Patterson and Trading Spaces billed and collected reimbursement from Medicaid for behavioral treatment services supposedly provided to beneficiaries under 21 who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder — but that there were no patient records or notes to back up those claims. In other words, the state’s theory is that the program paid for treatment that the paperwork couldn’t show was ever delivered.
That’s a recurring theme in false-claims enforcement, and it’s worth understanding why documentation matters so much here. Under Medicaid, the records aren’t just administrative housekeeping; they’re the evidence that a billed service actually occurred. When the notes don’t exist, the state’s position is that there’s nothing to substantiate the payment, and the claim becomes false.
“Medicaid fraud steals from taxpayers and threatens care for people who need it most. We will hold anyone who cheats this program accountable,” Tong said in announcing the resolution.
The Criminal Case Came First
One feature of this matter worth flagging is the sequence. The civil settlement follows a separate criminal investigation and prosecution handled by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney.
Patterson pleaded no contest to charges relating to defrauding the Connecticut Medicaid program and was sentenced in Hartford Superior Court on June 4, 2026. At sentencing, he paid $102,084.17 in criminal restitution.
A quick note on the “no contest” plea, since it comes up often and is easy to misread. A no-contest plea — nolo contendere — means the defendant doesn’t dispute the charges and accepts the conviction and its penalties, without formally admitting guilt. For practical purposes in the criminal case, it produces a conviction; its main distinction is that it generally can’t be used against the defendant as an admission in later civil litigation.
How the Civil Number Was Built
The relationship between the two figures — the roughly $102,000 in criminal restitution and the $710,000 civil settlement — is where the mechanics of the False Claims Act come into view.
The civil settlement amount represents treble damages plus civil per-claim penalties under the Connecticut False Claims Act, calculated based on the same claims and patients that were the subject of the criminal conviction. That’s the statutory engine at work: the False Claims Act allows the state to recover up to three times its actual damages, and to tack on a set penalty for each individual false claim submitted. So even where the underlying loss is a given figure, the civil exposure can end up several times larger once trebling and per-claim penalties are stacked on top.
This structure is deliberate. It’s designed to make submitting false claims a losing proposition on the math alone, not just a break-even risk where a provider who gets caught simply repays what was taken.
The Bigger Picture
Cases like this reflect a fairly consistent enforcement posture: the state can pursue a fraud both criminally, through the Chief State’s Attorney’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, and civilly, through the Attorney General’s office under the False Claims Act — and the two tracks can reinforce each other, with a criminal conviction laying the groundwork for a larger civil recovery.
Tong credited the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and the Department of Social Services Special Investigations Division for their assistance. Assistant Attorney General Karla Turekian and Investigator Timothy Edwards handled the matter under the direction of Deputy Associate Attorney General Gregory O’Connell, Chief of the Government Fraud Section.
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