YOUNGSTOWN — Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bennett on Wednesday called the 60 crimes ­­ Ryan P. Sheridan and five associates at Braking Point Recovery Center commited from 2015 to 2017 a “massive health care fraud” and said Sheridan drove it.

Bennett said the $24.5 million Braking Point was paid in false claims occurred because Sheridan, 39, drove his employees to increase billing so that revenues would rise.

Sheridan and two top managers are ordered to repay the $24.5 million.

His employees were “trying to be compliant with the law and all Ryan Sheridan is doing is saying ‘Get up the billing.'”

“It’s greed. It’s billing to make as much (money) as possible,” Bennett said. “They are billing for anything and everything. That’s all he cared about was profit.”

At the end of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Judge Benita Y. Pearson ordered Sheridan to serve 7 1/2 years in prison, which was almost exactly in the middle of the sentencing guidelines a probation official calculated for Sheridan’s offenses.

Bennett said a letter Sheridan wrote to Judge Pearson prior to Wednesday’s sentencing hearing “blames in essence everyone else but himself” for his personal problems and the violations of the Ohio Medicaid-program rules that shut down the company.

Bennett said Sheridan had a legal opinon that he was not able to bill Medicaid for 34 unlicensed patient beds at his Austintown facility but did it anyway.

“Kortney Gherardi was the one telling everyone to get their billings up, but it was (Sheridan) driving that,” Bennett said. Gherardi was Braking Point’s program director.

While Sheridan said in his letter he worked hard to make sure romantic relationships did not occur within his company, he had many of those kinds of relationships himself, Bennett continued.

Sheridan also frequently told Jennifer Sheridan, his ex-wife, who was in charge of all of the medical billings, he would kill himself if he didn’t get what he wanted, Bennett said. It was evidence of the way Sheridan manipulated people, he argued.

Bennett said that although Sheridan portrays himself as having done “all these wonderful things” for charity, he started GoFundMe accounts in some cases to raise the money.

Sheridan said in his letter that his “sobriety is everything,” but when investigators raided his home in Leetonia they found “a multitude of types drugs” in the house, Bennett said.

Sheridan, who has been in custody in the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown since early this year, pleaded guilty in October to 60 charges, including conspiracy to commit health fraud, Medicaid fraud, conspiracy to illegally distribute drugs, using the registration number of another to obtain controlled substances, operating premises to illegally distribute controlled substances and money laundering.

Pearson acknowledged Sheridan’s problems with domestic violence, saying that when Sheridan leaves prison, he will need to have a mental health assessment that should address his tendencies to engage in domestic violence.

“You won’t be on your own,” the judge told him, saying suppprt services will be provided.

Sheridan spoke a long time when it was his turn to address the judge.

“I feel like I’ve let everybody down,” he said. “I’m ashamed.” Later he said, “I feel like a horrible person hearing the things (Bennett) said.”