The former business office manager at Penacook Place Nursing Home in Haverhill is being accused this week of “stealing tens of thousands of dollars from elderly residents.”
Forty-eight-year-old Bridget Briand of Haverhill was indicted by an Essex County Grand Jury on charges of four counts of larceny over $1,200 from a person over 60 years old, two counts of larceny over $1,200 and six counts of and false entry into corporate books, according to Attorney General Maura Healey
An investigation revealed that between 2018 and 2019, Briand was running an alleged scheme in which she stole more than $20,000 from an 88-year-old resident by writing checks to herself from the resident’s account. After Covenant Health acquired Penacook Place in 2017, it discovered discrepancies that led to further investigation of the company’s accounting. The attorney general’s office began investigating in early 2020 after the matter was referred by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Healey’s office also alleges Briand transferred reimbursements owed to a number of other residents into the account from which she was stealing to cover up the original theft. When residents of Penacook or their insurance carriers overpaid the amount due for a particular month, Penacook would owe the resident a credit that was to be deposited into their account at Penacook, or Penacook would give the resident a check for reimbursement. Instead, Briand allegedly shifted credits from residents’ accounts and applied them as a payment to the resident’s account from which she was stealing. Briand also allegedly deposited a rebate check from a medical supply company that was payable to Penacook into the resident’s account.
Briand is also accused of making false entries into the accounting system and corporate books to misappropriate credits of other residents into the account from which she was stealing. Briand was fired last December.
She will be arraigned in Essex Superior Court at a later date.