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Prosecutors have filed new indictments charging the founders of Oregon disability services provider Rever Grand with racketeering. It’s a major development in a case that threatens the survival of a company that has become the largest private provider of in-home caregivers for Oregonians with intellectual disabilities.
The new indictments against Raymond Parenteau and Jolene Sesso, filed Oct. 16 in Josephine County Circuit Court, accuse the couple of theft, money laundering, and tax evasion. They allege the couple used their web of nonprofits and businesses to conduct “a pattern of racketeering activity” over an eight-year period beginning in 2016—and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Oregon Department of Human Services.
Parenteau and Sesso have previously pleaded not guilty after being indicted on lesser charges this summer. The couple’s attorney, Ron Hoevet, dismissed the new charges as a scare tactic. “I don’t believe they can prove the predicate offenses,” he says.
The fate of the couple’s business, which pulls in over $100 million a year in state payments by supplying in-home caregivers to people with severe development disabilities, is in doubt. Prosecutors at the Oregon Department of Justice Medicaid Fraud Unit, which is leading the prosecution of the couple and their company, have also filed new charges against Rever Grand that focus on alleged misrepresentations made on applications for state funding in 2021.
These charges could destroy the business. The Oregon Department of Human Services warned in September that the “credible allegations of fraud” could force it to halt the Medicaid payments that make up the bulk of the company’s revenue.
The DOJ Medicaid Fraud Unit has been tight-lipped about the exact nature of that alleged fraud. But the new indictments offer additional clues about how the state intends to pursue its case.
In 2008, Parenteau was convicted of a misdemeanor in Arizona following a prolonged battle over the education of his severely disabled son. The school district eventually paid him to hire a tutor, and he was accused of misusing the funds.
But legal filings suggest prosecutors believe the couple attempted to hide that fact after they moved to Oregon and created Rever Grand. Parenteau stated on a Medicaid provider enrollment form in 2016 that he did not have a criminal conviction, according to the Oct. 16 indictment.
At the time, both Parenteau and Sesso were listed as owners of Rever Grand, according to state business filings. But on May 16, 2019, Sesso amended that filing to remove Parenteau. That, prosecutors say, was “false.” As WW has previously reported, former employees of the company say Parenteau remained closely involved in the business.
Sesso later failed to disclose further information—what, exactly, is unclear—in several provider enrollment applications submitted to the state in late 2021. Whatever this was, it appears to have implicated Rever Grand. The two felonies listed in the indictment against Sesso involving “information required to be disclosed on the Disclosures List of the Oregon Department of Human Services Provider Enrollment Application signed October 29, 2021” are repeated in a separated criminal indictment against Rever Grand.
Rever Grand made its owners rich. A financial audit of Rever Grand’s business obtained by WW shows the company paid out nearly $16 million to its owners in 2022, WW has previously reported.
According to prosecutors, Parenteau and Sesso laundered profits from their enterprise through a series of financial transactions between 2021 and 2024.
The couple also evaded taxes in recent years, prosecutors claim, by filing tax returns with false information in order to claim deductions for charitable giving. They do not say to which charity; however, Parenteau’s nonprofit, the Foundation of Southern Oregon, is named in the indictment as a part of the criminal enterprise.
According to federal filings, Parenteau has given millions of dollars to that nonprofit, which provides horse riding lessons for children and adults with development disabilities on the couple’s Grants Pass ranch.