The owner of Gyst House, Gyst House 2 and Enlightening Minds has been charged with two felony counts of Medicaid fraud, two felony counts of false claims to a public agency and a felony count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

If convicted, the maximum penalty for Medicaid fraud is a fine of up to $50,000 or 10 times the value of the payments obtained, imprisonment for up to 10 years, or both.

Victoria Davenport, 60, is scheduled to be arraigned in Helena on July 7.

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The Montana Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit discovered Davenport’s fraudulent claims, as well as those of others, and the Attorney General’s Office filed the case in Lewis and Clark County District Court.

Davenport is a licensed counselor who, as owner of Enlightening Minds, The Gyst House, and The Gyst House 2, submitted claims totaling $2,300,729.65 and received $1,243,131.17 in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, according to court documents.

In 2025, the Cascade County Attorney’s Office and the Montana Department of Corrections ceased placing defendants at the Gyst House, Gyst House 2 and Enlightening Minds after reports were made that Davenport took a probationer to Mexico.

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In a press release, Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office said the investigations were part of a White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, established under President Trump.

The MFCU is part of the Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation, which is overseen by Attorney General Knudsen and is responsible for investigating and prosecuting healthcare providers who defraud the Montana Medicaid program or who abuse, neglect, or exploit patients in Medicaid-funded care facilities.

The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Alexandra van Belle, wrote in her charging documents that “Medicaid is a publicly funded medical insurance program established to provide health-care coverage for persons who cannot otherwise afford coverage,” and in 1967, the Montana Legislature authorized what is now the Department of Public Health and Human Services to implement a state Medicaid program.

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In 1977, Congress enacted the Medicare-Medicaid Anti-Fraud and Abuse Amendments, which allowed for the creation of “state Medicaid fraud control units and made funds available for states to prosecute Medicaid fraud.”

The Medicaid Fraud Control Unit within the Montana Department of Justice was established in 1995.

The unit receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which for the current fiscal year totals $939,984. The remaining 25 percent, or $313,325, is funded by the state.

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The Medicaid program requires providers to apply and become enrolled before they can be reimbursed for services provided in accordance with the rules.

Under Montana’s Medicaid rules, a provider may not submit claims for services they didn’t personally provide and must maintain patient records that support the claim.

For a provider to receive Medicaid reimbursement for services provided by interns or licensure candidates, the provider must be either a licensed mental health center or meet criteria set by the state.

In Davenport’s case, the state uncovered fraudulent Medicaid claims from January 2021 through the end of 2025. Her tampering charge covers her actions from fall 2025 through March 2026.

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Montana DPHHS has a Surveillance Utilization Review Section, or SURS, which works to prevent and identify fraud and abuse within the Medicaid system.

The state’s Medicaid fraud unit receives referrals from SURS, which had run a query to identify providers billing substantially more than their peers for behavioral health services and identified Davenport as a billing outlier for these services.

SURS had also received a report in August 2025 from a staffer in the Montana Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities office that Gyst House and Gyst House 2 were billing without prior authorization. She also told SURS that there had been reports of providers not being certified, no individual therapy sessions, and inappropriate dual relationships, according to court documents.

On Sept. 11, 2025, the DPHHS Licensure Bureau chief sent a complaint to SURS that she had received from former employees of Gyst Houses.

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Licensure Bureau staff interviewed four former employees separately, who “each described the same fraudulent activities occurring at both Gyst Houses: non-licensed staff completing notes that [Davenport] was signing; [Davenport] billing for services that were not being performed; and all staff are using [Davenport’s] electronic health record account so that it appears that [Davenport] is performing the work,” according to court documents.

The SURS unit investigated and found that Davenport billed Medicaid an average of 13 hours per day. Consistent billing of more than nine hours a day is an indicator that the provider is excessively billing or billing inappropriately for licensure candidates or other unlicensed staff.

Based on the complaints and its own investigation, the SURS unit sent a suspected fraud referral to the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at the Montana Department of Justice in September 2025.

At the same time, DPHHS had performed a routine site visit at Gyst House and alerted SURS that the staff found examples of fraudulent billing but couldn’t find progress notes or treatment plans that complied with agency policies, according to court documents.

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The Gyst Houses are residential substance use disorder facilities and Enlightening Minds provides outpatient behavioral health and substance use disorder services.

Davenport also serves as clinical director of Solara Mental Health Center in Great Falls, which does not accept Medicaid and was not included in the MFCU investigation, according to court documents.

The state also received a report in September 2025 through its hotline from a provider at Green Apple Counseling. The complainant reported that their front desk receptionist was a counseling student and former client of Enlightening Minds, who said she believed Davenport was billing Medicaid for no-shows and canceled appointments, according to court documents.

A state auditor determined that Davenport was an enrolled Medicaid provider and, between her three businesses, billed fraudulently for services provided by licensure candidates and for services she supposedly provided but was out of the country, according to court documents.

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The state auditor found that Enlightening Minds was not a licensed mental health center and didn’t meet the state criteria for such a facility. She ran a billing query on the facility from Jan. 1, 2021 to Sept. 22, 2025, and reviewed the list of clients Davenport provided who were seen by licensure candidates during that time. The auditor found that Davenport was improperly reimbursed $252,568 for services provided by licensure candidates at Enlightening Minds.

The auditor also found that neither Gyst House or Gyst House 2 were licensed as mental health centers or met state criteria. She ran a billing query on those facilities from Jan. 1, 2021 to Oct. 1, 2025, and reviewed documents on 69 claims that were written by staff who were neither licensed nor licensure candidates, according to court documents.

The total fraudulent reimbursement for those 69 claims is $17,046.78.

The auditor also compared the billing query with the list of clients who were seen by licensure candidates and the corresponding documentation, calculating that Gyst House and Gyst House 2 were fraudulently reimbursed $855,253.533 for services provided by licensure candidates.

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This number does not include claims that were also identified as fraudulent when Davenport billed for sessions when she was out of the country.

An investigating agent verified that Davenport was out of the country on the following dates:

• Oct. 24-28, 2023
• June 18-21, 2024
• Sept. 1-7, 2025

During those periods, the auditor found 97 claims from Enlightening Minds that were billed to Medicaid, listing Davenport as the treating provider. The total fraudulent reimbursement for these claims is $8,503.81.

The auditor found 120 claims from both Gyst Houses billed during those dates that listed Davenport as the treating provider. The total fraudulent reimbursement for these claims is $9,759.05.

It was mentioned during a Sept. 24, 2025 hearing in Cascade County District Court that the owner of Gyst House had taken a probationer to Mexico, in violation of his conditions.

The Electric was in the courtroom, tracking a different case.

The probationer was Michael Desjardin, who had been sentenced in May 2025 on a drug possession charge. He received a three-year suspended sentence to run concurrently with a sentence in another case.

In September 2025, a probation officer filed a report of violation with Cascade County District Court, writing that Desjardin had no known violations until Sept. 2, 2025, when an anonymous caller reported to Montana Probation and Parole that Desjardin appeared to be on a cruise in Mexico and was posting photos of himself holding or drinking alcoholic beverages.

He was required to get advance approval to travel outside the U.S., but did not.

The probation officer called Desjardin Sept. 2-3, but couldn’t reach him. On Sept. 2, the officer called Enlightening Minds, learning that Desjardin had gone on vacation and his shifts at Gyst House were covered for the week, according to court documents.

The probation officer asked to speak to Desjardin’s supervisor, Victoria Davenport, and was told she was on vacation.

On Sept. 5, 2025, a Homeland Security Investigations agent sent a letter confirming that Desjardin had boarded a cruise ship in California on Aug. 30. The cruise included several stops in Mexico.

On Sept. 8, another parole officer provided a different number for Desjardin and the officer told him to report immediately.

Desjardin told the parole officer that he’d been watching his employer’s house while she was on vacation and “blatantly and vehemently denied travel of any kind, continued to deny that he had left his assigned district,” until confronted with the Homeland Security documentation, according to the violation report.

Desjardin eventually admitted going on the cruise and said Davenport and her husband paid for his trip and accompanied him.

Desjardin has been employed in an advisory and therapeutic role at Gyst House and his “claim that his counselor and supervisor paid for the trip and accompanied him on a cruise where he was
gambling and consuming alcohol are particularly alarming because it casts suspicion on any adherence to professional boundaries,” the parole officer wrote in his report.

The Electric contacted Davenport on Oct. 1 about the cruise and the operational impact of the county and state ceasing placements with her businesses.

She responded, writing, “yes it has been really sad as there were quite a few people ready to go to treatment the week they decided to do this. I feel like I am being blamed for the actions of someone else. I feel it is so unfair! I may be more open to discussing in person.”

On Oct. 2, The Electric asked to set a time to meet.

Davenport never responded.

In her current criminal case, she’s also charged with tampering.

The state investigator sent requests for records to Davenport on Oct. 2, 2025 and Nov. 21, 2025.

An investigative subpoena was served to Davenport on Feb. 17, 2026.

In reviewing records, the state auditor found that 1,007 notes were signed during a five-day period after the subpoena had been served. Others had been signed after the records requests were sent in the fall.

As part of the state’s investigation, Alison Watt, 55, of Billings, was charged with Medicaid fraud and false claim to a public agency for fraudulently billing Medicaid for services she did not personally provide. Watt submitted claims totaling $249,587.92, resulting in $134,042.28 in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements. Watt billed Medicaid for counseling services provided by interns who were unauthorized to bill Medicaid independently, while representing herself as the provider, according to Knudsen’s office.

Laural Suydam, 46, of Helena, was convicted of theft for receiving $3,790.87 in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements. She worked as a personal care attendant providing in-house medical assistance to a Montana Medicaid recipient. In 2024, Suydam submitted documentation stating she had provided care to a patient, even though the patient denied it occurred. The electronic visit verification, which uses GPS, placed her at locations other than the patient’s residence. Suydam also submitted documentation that she provided care on a date when the patient was incarcerated. Her employer billed Medicaid and received reimbursement based on the falsified documentation and issued a paycheck.

Suydam received a 3-year suspended sentence to the Montana Department of Corrections. Suydam was also ordered to pay full restitution and to not act as a healthcare provider or personal care attendant for three years.

*Photo by American Courthouses