A judge has ruled that the federal government can seize the assets of a former Powell group home and substance abuse treatment facility, finding evidence that Northwest Wyoming Treatment Center submitted fraudulent bills to Medicaid.

On Sept. 6, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kelly Rankin ordered the forfeiture of three buildings, a vacant lot, a UTV, a trailer and money in two bank accounts belonging to Northwest Wyoming Treatment Center (NWTC). The exact value of the assets is unclear, but they could easily top $750,000.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cheyenne moved to seize NWTC’s property in March, alleging the nonprofit organization had engaged in healthcare fraud. The center had shrunk in recent years — it stopped submitting bills to Medicaid in 2016 — and shut down entirely on March 1.

Leaders for the center and their attorneys didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time Wednesday.

Public court records contain few details about the allegations against NWTC, as the complaint outlining the government’s case remains sealed from public view.

“There are still aspects of the case that are ongoing and we can’t comment on it,” a spokesman for Wyoming’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mark Trimble, said last week.

However, in a Sept. 5 court filing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Heimann did outline some of the complaint’s content.

Heimann said that, prior to the case being filed, NWTC’s board of directors reached a deal with prosecutors in which they agreed to let the government take the center’s property.

“NWTC also agreed that the United States [Attorney’s Office] could prove that NWTC submitted false and fraudulent substance-abuse treatment bills to Wyoming Medicaid, and that each of the defendant-properties constituted fraud proceeds or property derived from fraud proceeds,” Heimann wrote.

Although court records don’t explicitly say so, an attorney representing one of Northwest Wyoming Treatment Center’s former leaders has said the forfeiture case stems from the federal government’s investigation into Powell psychologist Gib Condie.

Condie is serving a three-year federal prison sentence for felony health care fraud. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Condie ran a billing scheme through his private, for-profit business, Big Horn Basin Mental Health Group, that defrauded Medicaid out of more than $2.28 million between 2012 and 2016.

Condie started Northwest Wyoming Treatment Center — a separate nonprofit organization — in 2000 as a group home for teenagers. It later expanded to provide residential drug treatment services and grew rapidly, employing 25 people and pulling in more than $2.3 million in revenue at its peak in 2015.

Records show that Medicaid was a primary source of NWTC’s revenue: The organization submitted nearly $6 million worth of claims to the federal-state program between 2012 and 2015.

By that point, Condie was no longer running NWTC; state records indicate he left his leadership post in July 2011. However, an attorney for the center’s former CFO said in April that the forfeiture case “does arise out of the leadership and advice that [Gib] Condie gave to Northwest Treatment Center.”

In his Sept. 6 judgment, Magistrate Judge Rankin said federal prosecutors had provided enough evidence to show that NWTC’s assets represented the proceeds of healthcare fraud; Rankin ordered that the properties be “condemned, forfeited and vested in the United States of America.”

The assets include two group homes on Hamilton Way, the former treatment center on Julie Lane, a utility trailer, a side-by-side vehicle, an unspecified amount of money inside two Big Horn Federal bank accounts and a vacant, 4-acre lot on Lane 8H where the center had once hoped to expand.

The physical properties will likely be sold at auction. The government has agreed to pay off a roughly $228,000 mortgage on one of the group homes and the treatment center. As for the rest of the funds, the federal government can spend them on its forfeiture program or for certain types of investigations, including drug crimes and racketeering.

In Condie’s criminal case, he agreed to forfeit what could have amounted to more than $1.5 million worth of assets and to also pay more than $2.28 million in restitution.