Owner of Lexington sober living home gets prison time for healthcare fraud
The owner of a Lexington sober living home were sentenced to prison late last month for her role in a kickback conspiracy and healthcare fraud scheme.
Delores Jordan, 57, was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in the scheme, according to U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Kentucky. She owned Serenity Keepers, a sober living home in Lexington.
Sober living homes are places where people in recovery from substance use disorder can stay and receive services such as counseling. The attorney’s office said Serenity Keepers used urine drug tests to ensure their clients were sober.
According to the attorney’s office, Jordan started the scheme in 2019 by soliciting kickbacks to refer urine samples to drug testing laboratories that could be billed to Medicaid and Medicare. The billing for the tests was fraudulent because the tests were not used for medical diagnosis or treatment, and Jordan knew that.
Medicaid and Medicare paid three different urine drug testing labs approximately $2.6 million for urine drug testing referred to them, according to the attorney’s office. Jordan received kickbacks via check, cash and electronic payments.
More than 9,000 urine drug tests were ordered in the scheme, according to the attorney’s office.
Jordan must serve at least 85% of her sentence and will be on probation for three years upon release, according to prosecutors.
Other defendants involved in the scheme
Four other defendants were involved in the scheme. Ernest Williams, 52, who ran several sober homes operating as Serenity Keepers, was also sentenced last month to five years of probation.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said Williams billed Medicaid for peer support services not provided by licensed peer support specialists. Every patient at the facility was billed for six hours of peer support services a day, but the services did not comply with Medicaid regulations, or were not provided at all.
Williams received $365,374 for the billed fraudulent services. The attorney’s office said that was “a percentage” of the amount billed to Medicaid for the homes he managed.
Williams also performed urine drug tests on the residents despite the tests not being ordered by a medical provider, according to the attorney’s office.
Jordan’s son, Dashawn Dawkins, was convicted by a federal jury last month for his role in the scheme. The attorney’s office said he received more than $60,000 in illegal kickbacks for ordering fraudulent urine drug tests.
Dawkins is scheduled to be sentenced July 9. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, according to prosecutors.
Jerome Davis, Jordan’s boyfriend, pleaded guilty to the kickback conspiracy in December 2025, according to court records. He was sentenced March 19 to a year and one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
Lily Bell, who paid the kickbacks to Dawkins, Jordan and Davis, pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft. She was sentenced to one year of probation.
