Seven Brooklyn residents were charged with various crimes relating to healthcare fraud schemes on Monday, including one case where defendants allegedly made $10.6 billion worth of fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid, federal officials said on Monday.
The charges are part of larger Department of Justice announcement on Monday called the National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which included a total of 324 defendants, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other licensed medical professionals, in 50 federal districts and 12 State Attorneys General’s Offices across the country for their alleged participation in various health care fraud schemes involving over $14.6 billion in intended loss.
“As alleged, the defendants perpetrated health care frauds of staggering proportions, victimizing taxpayers and government programs that serve the most vulnerable members of our society,” United States Attorney Joseph Nocella said in a statement.
Brooklyn residents Eric Juergens, Jaan Juergens, Juri Karunas, Renek Tiku and Vladislav Turaskin were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and/or health care fraud in "Operation Gold Rush," considered the the largest health care fraud case by loss amount by the U.S. Justice Department.
As alleged in the indictment, the defendants are accused of purchasing dozens of durable medical equipment companies (Scheme DME Companies) that already had the ability to submit claims to Medicare and Medicare Supplemental Insurers.
The defendants created fictitious corporate records that falsely indicated that the nominee owners controlled the Scheme DME Companies when, in fact, they were controlled by a foreign-based criminal organization. After the organization gained control over the Scheme DME Companies, it rapidly submitted billions of dollars in false and fraudulent health care claims to Medicare by stealing the identities and personal identifying information of more than one million Americans in all 50 states, including elderly and disabled Americans.
While the defendants submitted over $10.6 billion in fraudulent Medicare claims, some of the claims were not paid out, except for nearly $900 million through Medicare Supplemental Insurers and $41 million from Medicare, according to officials.
The organization deployed a range of tactics to circumvent the anti-money laundering controls at multiple financial institutions, officials said. To open financial accounts, the organization armed its nominee owners, many of whom were not lawfully present in the U.S., with false documentation reflecting that the nominee owners maintained ownership and control of the Scheme DME Companies.
Upon opening the financial accounts, the organization funneled fraud proceeds from Medicare and Medicare Supplemental Insurers into the accounts as seemingly “clean” money. From there, funds were moved to shell companies and various banks overseas, including banks in China, Singapore, Pakistan, Israel and Turkey. To further conceal the money trail, cryptocurrency was used to launder the stolen funds, according to officials.
To date, the government has seized approximately $27.7 million in fraud proceeds as part of Operation Gold Rush.
Separately, Brooklyn resident Hong Yuen Mak, also known as "Joe Mak," pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to offer and pay kickbacks in an alleged scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare over $1 million for over the counter (OTC) products. As alleged, Mak, a pharmacy owner, and his co-conspirators paid pharmacy customers with gift cards in exchange for charging the customers’ OTC cards for non-existent transactions.
In another case, Brooklyn resident Joseph Tony Brown-Arkah was charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud, conspiracy to distribute narcotics and narcotics distribution in connection with an alleged $85 million health care fraud and narcotics distribution scheme.
As alleged in the superseding indictment, Brown-Arkah, the owner of a Suboxone clinic that conducted business as American Medical Centers (AMC), together with others, engaged in a scheme to bill Medicare and Medicaid fraudulently for services not provided or not provided as billed, and to prescribe narcotics pursuant to prescriptions that were not issued for a legitimate medical purpose.
In particular, AMC patients received prescriptions for Suboxone (a Schedule III narcotic) after meeting with non-licensed medical providers, an excluded provider, or in some instances, no health care provider whatsoever. The prescriptions were written by a medical provider living in Florida, who did not see or speak with the patients; instead, the provider typically issued the prescriptions based on information provided by Brown-Arkah or another co-conspirator, according to officials.
AMC patients were required to submit to urine drug screening, blood tests and sometimes other diagnostic testing in order to receive their Suboxone prescriptions; the laboratory and diagnostic tests, which were then billed to Medicare and Medicaid.
