Owner of Lexington sober home pleads guilty to kickback conspiracy
The owner of a Lexington sober living home pleaded guilty to charges after she was found to have fraudulently billed $20 million in Medicaid for unlawful urine tests.
Delores Jordan, the owner and operator of Serenity Keepers, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of charging a kickback conspiracy.
The facility is also referred to as Serenity Keeper’s in the court record. Sober-living homes are places where people in recovery from substance-use disorder can stay and receive services such as counseling.
Those named in the original indictment are Jordan, 56, of Charlotte, N.C.; her son Deshawn Dawkins, of Lexington; Jordan’s boyfriend Jerome Davis, of Indianapolis; and Ernest Williams of Lexington, according to the indictment filed in November 2024.
Sober living homes often employ what are called peer support specialists to help residents. Dawkins and Williams held that job with the facility.
The indictment charges that in August 2019, Jordan started soliciting kickbacks to refer urine samples to drug testing laboratories that could be billed to Medicaid and Medicare. Jordan solicited payments from a person in Boyle County who had a consulting company with connections with drug-testing labs, the indictment said.
Jordan initially received kickbacks paid to her son of about $1,300 every two weeks in return for sending urine samples from Serenity Keepers, but upped that demand to $5,000 every two weeks beginning around October 2021 based on the volume of samples her sober-living home was sending, the indictment charges.
Jordan also demanded $5,000 payments every two weeks to her boyfriend, Davis, through his company, X-Tremly for Christ LLC, according to the indictment.
Jordan allegedly recruited a doctor, who was not identified by name in the indictment, to sign order forms for urine drug testing.
The billing for the tests was fraudulent because the tests were not used for medical diagnosis or treatment, and Jordan knew that, according to the original complaint.
Medicaid and Medicare reimburse providers for tests that are used in medical treatment, but not for tests that are used for nonmedical purposes, such as testing for the use of drugs.
Serenity Keepers caused about $20 million in unnecessary drug testing to be billed to Medicaid between August 2019 and March 2022, and another $670,000 to Medicare, according to court documents.
Jordan is the only person to have pleaded guilty as of Thursday. Her sentencing is not yet scheduled. She faces up to five years in prison.
The indictment also accuses Jordan, Dawkins and Williams of fraudulently billing for peer support services.
Dawkins and Williams are charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Dawkins and Davis are charged with a kickback conspiracy.
Dawkins and Williams face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, and Davis could get up to five years, according to a news release.
A trial is scheduled for Dec. 8, 2025 at 9 a.m. in Lexington. It is expected to last 10 days.
