Former Virginia EMS employee accused of embezzling $4 million (2024)

Federal prosecutors have accused a former associate director of the Office of Emergency Medical Services of embezzling $4 million, the latest development in a yearlong financial scandal.

Authorities allege that Adam Lamar Harrell of Chesterfield County created a fake company with a fake employee, billed the Office of Emergency Medical Services fraudulent invoices and cashed large checks. They say he stole from the government, committed mail theft and evaded his taxes.

Authorities say he used the money to buy real estate, luxury vehicles, dozens of firearms and jewelry, according to a 15-page criminal information report filed Monday in federal court. Harrell declined to comment.

These are the first criminal charges in the saga and just a small piece of the office’s financial crisis.

Health department leaders previously said $33 million was misallocated. When properly disbursed, the money buys ambulances and defibrillators and pays the nonprofits that train and coordinate EMS agencies throughout the state.

OEMS, a division of the Virginia Department of Health, collects revenue when Virginia residents renew their license and disburses it to 700 volunteer and municipal rescue squad and ambulance agencies with 33,000 staffers across the state. The office expected to have a budget of $56 million this year.

In summer 2023, while conducting a routine audit, officials from the Virginia Department of Health say they found that millions of dollars had gone missing. Ultimately, health leaders said the office was behind $33 million in payments.

For the past five years, OEMS failed to make a roughly $2 million payment to Virginia Commonwealth University Health System on time. The office moved funds across accounts to cover shortfalls, provided services without appropriate funding, overspent on contracts and operated under little-to-no oversight from the health department.

To pay the office’s bills, the health department later redirected $8 million in excess funds, and legislators agreed to divert more than $50 million to the office.

The following account is based on prosecutors’ allegations in a criminal information report, which is an alternative form of beginning the criminal process and not an indictment. Television station WTVR first reported the criminal information.

Alleged fake company

Harrell, a Midlothian resident, was an employee of the health department from 2013 to August of last year. In 2019, he became the associate director of OEMS, responsible for managing the state’s emergency response programs, research and information technology systems.

By 2020, prosecutors say, he began embezzling money. They assert that he formed a limited liability company called Strategic Tech Innovations and suggested that a vendor, identified only as Vendor A, hire Strategic Tech as a software subcontractor to be paid by OEMS. Prosecutors say he created an alias named Robert Green, who purported to be the company’s office manager.

When another employee went searching on the internet for a name or address connected to Strategic Tech, the employee found nothing.

“I know they are a new company,” Harrell told the employee. “Been around about a year.”

Harrell allegedly concealed his ownership of the company from the vendor, and concealed from OEMS that he suggested the vendor use Strategic Tech. Neither side was aware Harrell had a conflict of interest, prosecutors said.

Ultimately, the vendor and OEMS agreed to hire Strategic Tech to provide software and technology services at what prosecutors said were exorbitant prices. The vendor gave Harrell a check for $193,000, believing Harrell would pay Strategic Tech. Instead, he pocketed the money, prosecutors said.

In the two years that followed, Harrell allegedly created 15 invoices from Strategic Tech, failed to provide a vast majority of the goods or services proposed and set high non-market prices for the various items on the invoice. One check was worth more than $800,000.

“Harrell, by dint of his role as OEMS associate director, was able to unilaterally approve the same fraudulent Strategic Tech invoices that he had personally drafted,” the prosecutors’ document states.

Often, OEMS allocates money to nonprofit EMS councils, and the councils pay vendors. According to the allegation, Harrell sent his invoices to the Western Virginia EMS Council, and the council mailed checks to his home. Because he routed the money through the nonprofit council, prosecutors say, his company did not have to be an approved vendor for the health department, and his fake company evaded scrutiny by OEMS’ accounts payable department.

Last embezzlement was 1995

Altogether, federal authorities accused Harrell of falsely receiving $4.1 million in state government funds.

According to Chesterfield County property records, Harrell and another person sharing his last name purchased a six-bedroom, five-bathroom, new-construction home in Midlothian for $794,000 in 2022.

Harrell left OEMS last August. The criminal information did not address the circ*mstances of his departure, and Maria Reppas, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Health, declined to comment.

Reppas said the health department learned of the charges Tuesday. After the department discovered financial irregularities last summer, State Health Commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton notified the Office of the State Inspector General, Virginia State Police and the Auditor of Public Accounts. The health department has cooperated with the investigation, and Reppas declined to comment on the legal proceedings.

In the past year the health department has revamped personnel in OEMS.

This is not the first alleged case of embezzlement at OEMS. In 1995, an administrative manager admitted to embezzling $870,000 over three years. Malcolm Roger Nicholls Jr. created fictitious grant requests for the Forest View Rescue Squad, where he was treasurer. Then as a member of OEMS, he would approve those grants. Instead of depositing the money into the rescue squad’s account, he gave it to himself.

He was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. A year later then-Gov. George Allen signed legislation designed to prevent such embezzlement from happening again.