WASHINGTON —
A D.C. social services representative made low-income residents pay her to register for a locally-funded healthcare system, despite the process being completely free. Friday morning, she was sentenced to 24 months in prison.
Ruth Nivar worked for the District Department of Human Services, processing applications and renewal applications for Medicaid, as well as D.C. Healthcare Alliance and the Immigrant Children’s Alliance (ICP), two programs for low-income residents who do not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare that are funded by the local government.
D.C. government does not charge any fees to apply for any of those three programs. Yet, beginning as early as 2018, Nivar began instructing people who came to her for help to pay her, sometimes hundreds of dollars, to process their insurance coverage.
Nivar continued to do this until 2023, the government said. In 2022, she brought in an associate, Yessica Moya, who didn’t work for the government, who helped her process more applications that she couldn’t get to during the day. Moya testified that the two of them took money from 50 people during the year they worked together.
At her sentencing Friday, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg said because she was a DHS employee, Nivar’s actions undermined faith in the government. It’s bigger than just harming herself and those she directly took money from, he said, it causes people to believe the government as a whole is corrupt.
Nivar’s counsel argued that she began doing this for free, helping explain to people who were getting stuck in the bureaucratic processes or didn’t understand English well enough to understand how to apply.
According to her attorney, DHS has a cut-off every day, and people line up for hours, starting as early as 4 a.m., just to file their paperwork to get their healthcare processed. Then, oftentimes DHS would lose paperwork, forcing people to work through this process multiple times, he said. Those people, who may need immediate healthcare, would have to wait 45 days for it to be approved and kick in. When they paid Nivar for help, their healthcare kicked in in 3 days.
Though she knew it was illegal, her attorney argued, she was just helping give them a shortcut, not purposefully extorting them. But the government said the victims they spoke with fully believed they needed to pay her in order to get their healthcare, not just as a shortcut.
Either way, Boasberg said, this was not the right way to help people.
“The answer is to reform DHS,” Boasberg said. “Work within the system, not do something that only benefits you.”
