Lyneth Nyabiosi, a former Sheppard Pratt Health System director, and her husband, Willie Evans III, have pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail fraud arising from a scheme to bilk Sheppard Pratt out of millions for work performed by a company that the defendants secretly controlled.

The guilty pleas were announced Friday by U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Special Agent Kevin Perkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

From November 2005 to September 2014, Nyabiosi was the director of Sheppard Pratt’s Health Information Management Department (HIM Department), according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The department was responsible for maintaining patient medical records.

Nyabiosi, 50, and Evans, 53, operated an entity, “Information Management Solutions Technology,” (IMST), designed to appear as an independent third party contractor, but which was in fact created by the couple to carry out the fraud scheme, prosecutors said.

Work Never Done or Inflated

According to their plea agreements, Nyabiosi in March 2007 entered into a contract with IMST to manage medical records for Sheppard Pratt without telling her employer that she and her husband controlled it.

Evans, prosecutors said, signed the contract as “Jim Davies,” a purported regional account executive.

From 2007 to 2014, the couple submitted over 180 false invoices requesting that Sheppard Pratt pay IMST for work which was never performed, or for excessively inflated amounts for the work that was actually performed, the release from Rosenstein’s office says.

According to the plea agreement:

• IMST picked up at most approximately 2,863 boxes of patient records from Sheppard Pratt for short-term storage, yet the invoices falsely represented that IMST had picked up over 500,000 boxes of patient records.

• Other invoices and documents provided to Sheppard Pratt falsely represented that IMST had picked up and was storing 20,270 boxes of records from the company Iron Mountain, when in fact, IMST never picked up a single box.

• And on two separate occasions in 2009, the defendants sent invoices to Sheppard Pratt for purported work on a project to digitize older patient records. The defendants paid a third party company $26,395 to complete the work, but they billed Sheppard Pratt $546,510.

$2.74 Million in Restitution

Nyabiosi personally approved all of the false invoices, causing Sheppard Pratt to mail checks to IMST totaling $2,742,791, according to prosecutors.

The defendants deposited the money in their bank account for their personal use.

Nyabiosi and Evans have agreed to forfeit and pay restitution of $2,742,791, and to forfeit two residences located in Bear and Newark, Delaware, and three vehicles, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Attempts to reach the couple at the addresses in Delaware address were unsuccessful.

The defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for conspiring to commit mail fraud.

U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar has scheduled sentencing for Nyabiosi on February 4, 2016, and Evans for February 5, 2016.