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Raymond Parenteau’s fight for his disabled son once led to him being booked in an Arizona jail—and, much later, to owning a multimillion-dollar business empire.
The Grants Pass company he co-founded, Rever Grand, is now Oregon’s largest provider of what are known as “direct support professionals,” workers who provide in-home care for people with severe disabilities. The company has had revenues of more than $100 million each year for several years—all of which came from government.
The business has made Parenteau, 58, a rich man. And some powerful enemies.
The most important of which is the state’s biggest labor union, Service Employees International Union. Rever Grand is the largest of around 200 private and nonprofit agencies whose 8,000 or so employees compete with SEIU, which has 30,000 members that bargain with the state to provide the same services, but earn lower wages. They’re all paid by a combination of federal Medicaid dollars and money from the state’s general fund.
The state has previously accused Rever Grand of violating the federal Anti-Kickback Statute to recruit new clients. And SEIU argues that Rever Grand exploits the system. “This is a company that seems to use loopholes to try and scam money off Medicaid,” says Melissa Unger, who leads SEIU Local 503.
The state of Oregon apparently agrees, at least when it comes to two of the company’s co-founders. In June, records show, state prosecutors charged Parenteau and his wife, Jolene Sesso, in Josephine County Circuit Court with Medicaid fraud. Rever Grand has not returned WW’s requests for comment. A company executive has told employees the firm has been the victim of “misinformation” circulating online, but provided no additional details.
Parenteau ostensibly stepped down as CEO of Rever Grand in 2019. (He received a $1.1 million severance package, according to a company audit submitted to state regulators.) But former Rever Grand employees tell WW that Parenteau remained closely involved in the company’s operations.
The Josephine County indictments accuse both Parenteau and Sesso of “making a false claim for health care payments” to the Oregon Department of Human Services. Between the two cases, prosecutors have tacked on 17 counts of first-degree aggravated theft, a charge punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Medicaid expansion has brought billions of dollars in federal money to Oregon’s health care system. This has resulted in thousands more people receiving badly needed care. But it has also created new opportunities for profiteers. The indictments open a rare window into a multibillion-dollar industry that appears to be loosely regulated.
For now, it’s not entirely clear what exactly the couple is accused of doing. As is typical in cases such as these, the indictments do not detail how the crimes were committed, and prosecutors remain tight lipped. Parenteau, who lives with his wife and son on a sprawling ranch just outside Grants Pass, declined to comment.
But Greg McCaul, a Hawaii-based investor who helped launch Rever Grand, says the two are victims of a union-led witch hunt that includes state regulators. “They have been trying since the day we opened to get rid of us,” he tells WW.
It will be months, if not years, before a court determines the truth. In the meantime, here’s what we know:
Parenteau has gotten in trouble for misusing government payments before.
In 2008, he was charged with pocketing money intended for a tutor for the family’s special needs son.
Parenteau ultimately pleaded guilty to lesser misdemeanor charges of tampering with a public record, and was sentenced to a year of probation.
Eight years later, Parenteau and Sesso founded Rever Grand with McCaul after the couple settled in Southern Oregon. At the time, the state was overhauling a program designed to allow people with developmental disabilities to live in their own homes. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the program expanded rapidly.
In 2013, the state budgeted $1.7 billion over the following biennium to provide various services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Now, that number is $5 billion per biennium. (A substantial portion is federal Medicaid funds.) But the program’s rapid growth came with a shortage of workers willing to work in the field.
Enter Rever Grand, which aggressively recruited caregivers with promises of a higher wage, and currently employs or contracts thousands of people who provide care in homes statewide.
Business has been good.
Payments to Rever Grand from the state rose from nearly $60 million in 2021 to more than $110 million during just the first 10 months of 2023. The company was far and away the biggest recipient of the nearly $1 billion the state paid out to community living service agencies like Rever Grand over that same period.
A financial audit of Rever Grand’s business obtained by WW shows the company paid out nearly $16 million to its owners in 2022.
The case is being prosecuted by the Oregon Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Unit. Elizabeth Ballard Colgrove, assistant attorney in charge of the unit, said she couldn’t comment further on the accusations levied against Parenteau and Sesso.
Meanwhile, the couple has been released pending trial. A judge has given them permission to travel to California and Arizona for medical appointments—and to Nevada, where their attorney says they own property near Lake Tahoe.