• Mi Ok Song Bruining, 64, of Warwick, was sentenced for her role in the ‘brazen’ fraud committed by the Recovery Connections Centers of America.
• She will serve three months of home confinement.
• The center’s director is serving 98 months in prison.

PROVIDENCE – A Warwick social worker labeled “the five-minute queen” for the speed with which she shuttled through clients will serve three months’ on home confinement for her role in a scheme to defraud the government and insurers while robbing patients of crucial opioid treatment.

U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy on Wednesday sentenced Mi Ok Song Bruining, 64, to three years of supervised release, with the first three months on home confinement, for conspiring with her former boss to commit health care fraud out of a Providence opioid treatment center.

McElroy also ordered Bruining to perform 100 hours of community service, and pay $100,000 in restitution.

“People rely on their mental health professionals … for guidance,” McElroy said while acknowledging that Michael Brier CEO of Recovery Connections Centers of America, was the ringleader.

Bruining, who will lose her license, expressed regret in court.

“I profoundly apologize,” she said.

How the scheme went down

Brier ran Recovery Connections Centers of America, with offices in Rhode Island and Massachusetts from headquarters on Wickenden Street, with Bruining acting as the supervisor.

Under the scheme, the office billed insurance companies for 45-minute counseling sessions per patient when each actually received only a few minutes of attention. 

Bruining, who previously pleaded guilty, was known as the “five-minute queen” for her ability to shrink counseling sessions to mere minutes. Authorities accused her of training staff on the tactics, equipping one with a bell to ensure that patients moved briskly along. 

Upon their arrest in 2023,  authorities called the scheme “one of the most brazen and egregious examples of health care fraud the FBI has seen here in Rhode Island in recent history.”   

McElroy sentenced Brier, of Newton, Massachusetts, to 98 months in prison for defrauding Medicare while depriving patients struggling with substance-use disorders of needed treatment. He must pay $3.5 million in restitution.

Four federal facilities in Vermont could be on the chopping block as the Trump administration seeks to sell off what it has deemed “non-core” government properties in an effort to cut costs.  

The U.S. General Services Administration on Tuesday published a list of 320 federal facilities considered “not core to government operations” that the agency said it would look to shutter or sell, including the Winston Prouty Federal Building in Essex Junction, the U.S. Post Office and Customs building in St. Albans and the Social Security Administration offices on School St. in Montpelier. 

A “shed” in Derby Line that was listed as used by the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was also included in the inventory. 

By Wednesday afternoon, the list had been removed entirely from the agency’s website and replaced with a web page that said the list was now “coming soon.” The quick change raised further questions about whether the Trump administration would follow through on its plan to “dispose of” all the properties listed, as described on the web page.

“To be clear, just because an asset is on the list doesn’t mean it’s immediately for sale,” Paul Hughes, a spokesperson for the General Services Administration, said in a written statement to VTDigger.

During the disposal process, the General Services Administration, which manages real estate belonging to the federal government, can transfer or sell a property to any number of entities, including private companies and organs of state or local government.

Assuming the agency does move forward with its plans, it’s unclear what would happen to operations at the Vermont properties, some of which provide essential services to Vermonters and residents of neighboring states. 

Formerly a post office facility, the St. Albans property now houses the state’s only U.S. passport center, as well as offices for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the State Department, according to city manager Dominic Cloud. 

“The building has been a prominent fixture of downtown for a generation,” he said. “People from all over the Northeast come to get their passports here.”

Cloud emphasized that he hoped the decision to sell the facility wouldn’t necessarily spell the end of the passport center, as the offices could be moved elsewhere. But he also questioned the building’s designation as a “non-core” facility.

“Over the 15 years that I’ve been here the building has been nearly constantly invested in and improved,” Cloud said. “It’s not a white elephant by any measure.” 

“We’re monitoring the situation to see where it goes from here,” he said. 

In Montpelier, Mayor Jack McCullough said that although he was aware that the city’s Social Security office had appeared on the General Services Administration list, the city had received “no communication” from the federal government about possible plans for the building.

The General Services Administration is currently in the process of trying to sell off the Federal Building in Montpelier, which housed the city’s post office and other federal offices until it sustained significant flooding damage in July 2023 and shuttered its doors.

But McCullough said that, as far as he knew, the Social Security offices were still operating and serving Vermonters.

“It’s a real concern to me because I think people in the community have been relying on that office as a way of communicating with the Social Security Administration,” McCullough said. 

Assuming the building does get sold off, McCullough said, he hoped that the Social Security Administration would find another way to provide services to community members and that the facility would eventually fill a different need for Montpelier.

“One can imagine productive uses for the building,” McCullough said. “But I don’t really know what’s happening with it at this point.”

According to Hughes, the General Services Administration expects to republish the list “in the near future” and had received “an overwhelming amount of interest” in various properties on the list — though he did not specify whether any of the Vermont properties had garnered interest.

“To be clear, just because an asset is on the list doesn’t mean it’s immediately for sale. However, we will consider compelling offers (in accordance with applicable laws and regulations) and do what’s best for the needs of the federal government and taxpayer,” Hughes said.