Six people were busted yesterday for allegedly running a 10-year scheme in Brooklyn that filed bogus health claims and ripped off Medicaid by more than $47 million, authorities announced yesterday.
The fraud’s accused mastermind, Alexander Levy, had the help of a handful of employees in allegedly setting up a string of clinics and ambulette stations, using unlicensed doctors to treat the sick and elderly — and pocketing the cash.
Levy had been barred from any participation in the Medicaid program by the state Department of Health in 1997 for submitting false claims to Medicaid for unnecessary services and for care that was never actually given.
But he illegally circumvented the system and continued to make claims, going to great lengths to hide his involvement in the care facilities he ran, said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who filed a civil suit to go with the criminal charges.
“As we have done before, we ‘followed the money,’ which led us to today’s serious charges,” Cuomo said.
Levy is accused of squandering the cash on at least three luxury cars and a divorce settlement.
The people who allegedly ran his operation — employees he paid as little as $35,000 a year — made no cash from the scam, their attorneys said yesterday.
Levy, 54, from Staten Island, grinned as he was led to his arraignment in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday. He faces up to 25 years for grand larceny, health-care fraud and money laundering. He was held on $250,000 cash bail.
His alleged accomplices at the clinics — Zona Castellano, 69, Aaron Bethea, 53, Leonid Sklyar, 30, Yelena Bogatyrov, 43, and Arthur Gutman, 42 — were also charged with grand larceny and fraud.
Prosecutors claim Levy operated ANR Advance Home Care Inc., on Avenue U, as well as two ambulette companies and three clinics in Brighton Beach.
Levy “set up a series of corporations elaborately structured to conceal his control,” a spokesman for Cuomo said.
Levy lawyer Dominic Amorosa said his client provided adequate health care. He called the charges “enormously exaggerated.”
Source: https://nypost.com/2009/07/17/quack-hirer-busted-on-47m-medicaid-rap/