Скачать или смотреть Florida accidentally pays company $5 million, CEO may have used money to run for Congress

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — The state of Florida is suing a Miramar-based medical company to recover almost 6 million dollars in COVID response overpayments.
The real story may be that Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was the CEO of Trinity Healthcare Services at the time.
In a 194-page lawsuit, Florida’s Department of Emergency Management says they hired Trinity Health Care Services as a contractor to register people for and administer COVID-19 vaccines in March of 2021. As CEO, Cherfilus-McCormick signed the contract.
That spring, Trinity sent an invoice of $50,578.50 to the state.
By June, the state paid that invoice. However, a clerical error resulted in Trinity receiving $5,057,850.
Over time, the state overpaid Trinity another three-quarters of a million dollars.
By 2024, the state realized the errors, totaling more than $5.7 million.
In a letter, the state asked for the money back and alerted Cherfilus-McCormick and Trinity that doing business with Florida requires “any money received in error to be returned.”
The state gave them until July 2024 to return the cash, but the deadline came and went.
In court documents, the FDEM says Trinity ‘took advantage of the state of emergency and knowingly processed an invoice more than 100 times its typical invoice size.”
This only adds to the congresswoman’s troubles with finances.
In a separate investigation, which may be related, the Office of Congressional Ethics is looking into whether Cherfilus-McCormick violated campaign finance laws.
A preliminary report from that investigation says Cherfilus-McCormick claimed her salary at Trinity Health Care Services was by more than 6 million dollars in 2021.
Ryan Nichol of FloridaPolitics.com said it’s not good news for the congresswoman who represents parts of Broward and Palm Beach County.
“She spent a lot of money and there were questions, at the time, as to how did she get all of this money, where did all of this come from?” said Nichol.
He added that whatever the outcome of these two cases, it puts her in a politically vulnerable position.
“You can guarantee someone is going to challenge her. It’s a deep blue seat. No Republican can win there, but if a strong democratic challenger came forward while she’s facing all of these questions that could certainly pose a threat to her future political career,” he said.
CBS12 News reached out to Trinity Healthcare Services and Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick’s office.
Her congressional communications director said this is not an official matter, so her office is unable to comment.
Presumably, that’s because this is an issue with her healthcare business, not her role in the house.
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