A Seattle woman faces felony theft charges in Franklin County Superior Court after she allegedly submitted $41,000 in phony bills to the Washington Department of Labor and Industries for translation services that did not occur.

Carla C. Moreno, 33, aka Carla Cynthia Montes de Oca Moreno and Carla Moreno Montgomery, was arraigned Dec. 8 on first-degree theft and first-degree identity theft associated with phony invoices, forging interpreter’s signatures and sending unqualified people to client appointments.

The charges cover a period between 2014 and 2017, when the Seattle resident operated two similarly named interpreter services, The Language Spot and Language Spot, both based in Pasco.

According to L&I, Moreno hired independent contractors to provide language interpretation at medical and physical therapy appointments for Spanish-speaking workers with injury claims with the department.

L&I workers sought an internal investigation when they noticed discrepancies in billings in 2016, triggering a two-and-a-half-year investigation by L&I and the state attorney general’s office.

An audit uncovered 558 fraudulent bills. On some, she falsified signatures of certified interpreters and physicians. The same audit found that Moreno, who was a certified interpreter, submitted 89 claims for services she rendered in the Tri-Cities while she was physically in Seattle, where she was a student at the University of Washington.

In addition to filing fraudulent bills, Moreno is accused of hiring unqualified interpreters to accompany injured workers, putting their ability to communicate with doctors and other service providers at risk.

Moreno applied for provider numbers for four certified interpreters, three of whom did not work for her, and used the information to submit bills. In one case, a certified interpreter was shown 60 bills with his name on it. He had stopped working for Moreno a year before the billing date.

She stopped billing the state in 2017. Through an attorney, she declined to be interviewed for the investigation.