This is a very cool website!
But, it shows what suckers we Americans are!
Below are the Top Ten fugitives from justice at the Office of Inspector General at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.
Some individually ripped-off Medicare and Medicaid to the tune of millions of dollars, collectively the number must exceed a billion. HHS lists 170 who have escaped justice and are in hiding or have fled the country and returned to their home country.
What do you notice about the top ten? All are foreigners who were in the US busily setting-up scam operations! This is a screenshot. Go to the website and click on the links beneath each picture to see what these foreign scammers stole from us and how they did it. https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/fugitives/
I looked up the ‘bios’ for a few of the top ten:
Slepak is in Russia.
Onajobi is in Nigeria.
Moreira is in Spain.
And, Tilong is in Cameroon.
Of course what I most want to know (but we are never told!) is how they got into the US (presumably legally!) in the first place!
I have said this before, but I am convinced someone could build an entire political campaign around finding and bringing to justice frauds, crooks and criminals.
By the way, if you are new to Frauds and Crooks, know that one fun thing to do is to use the language of the Left whenever you can.
One of their favorite phrases for you to co-opt is “new American!” Watch for it, they (and their media lackeys) use it everywhere in place of the word “immigrant” or “refugee.”
The word “refugee” previously had a positive connotation, but got tainted over the last few years. Gee, I wonder why!
So, they needed new positive-sounding words, thus “new American.”
They never use the word “alien” and they sure don’t want to hear the word “foreigner.”
So what do you do? Use the words “foreigner,” “alien” or “illegal alien” (or “illegal immigrant”) when appropriate and definitely have fun with “new American!”
The latest news in the case of 68-year-old Nagy Mohamed Abdelhamed ripping off the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the US ishereat the York Dispatch.
But as is so often the case with these crooks, in order to illustrate the news the media must use graphics and stock images like the one I’m using because there is NO PHOTO of the perp to be found!
York man guilty, defrauded feds of about $30K in Medicaid benefits
A York-area man scammed the U.S. government by fraudulently accepting nearly $30,000 in Medicaid and food stamps despite owning a gas station and having some $86,000 tucked away in eight bank accounts, according to federal officials. This made me laugh! Creeping Sharia tells Abdelhamed’s story and illustrates it with this image! https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2019/01/02/muslim-medicaid-fraud/ Nagy Mohamed Abdelhamed, 68, no street address provided, pleaded guilty Tuesday, Feb. 5, to felony health-care fraud in Harrisburg’s federal court, according to court records.
[….]
In August 2014 Abdelhamed applied for Medicaid as well as food stamps, which are now called Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. He didn’t disclose in the application the fact that he owned a four-bedroom home, a York-area gas station and a 2008 Mercedes Benz E350, his federal indictment states. On disability too: He also was already receiving $1,124 a month in Social Security disability benefits and, at the time, had about $56,000 in eight separate bank accounts, according to the indictment.
In his Medicaid/SNAP application, he lied and said he had no monthly income and owned no property besides his home, the indictment states. He also failed to disclose the money in his bank accounts or his Mercedes, officials said.
More here.
The Justice Department’s press release is here.
What should you do? Every time you see a story in a local publication or on the local news that does not show a photo (or mention the nationality) of the perp, contact the news desk and ask why there is no photo and what is his/her immigration status. I know it’s unlikely they will produce one (or have any clue where the ‘new American’ is from), but it sends a signal that you notice their little tricks.
The story is illustrated like this because there is apparently no photo of the scammer.
Nothing annoys me more than a story like this with no photo of the convicted ‘man’ named Ali Jama.
So I’m making an educated guess that since he lives in Columbus, Ohio***, the city with the second largest Somali population in America and that the name is a common Somali name, that he is Somali! Someone who knows Ali Jama can tell me I’m wrong. I will be waiting!
Here is a bit ofthe story (STL News), taken directly from the Dept. of Justicepress releaseon this fraudster.
OHIO NEWS: COLUMBUS, ALI JAMA, COLUMBUS HOME HEALTH CARE PROVIDER SENTENCED FOR FRAUD
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The co-owner of Alpha Star Health Care Inc. was sentenced today in federal court to 18 months in prison for running home health care fraud and tax fraud schemes.
Ali Jama, 50, of Columbus, pleaded guilty in September 2018 to one count of making false health care statements and one count of making false statements to the IRS.
[….]
According to court documents, Alpha, which was located on Westerville Road in Columbus, was a Medicare and Ohio Medicaid health care provider. In 2015 and 2016, Jama improperly billed Medicare and Medicaid by allowing unqualified health care aides to provide care. Jama billed for services by disqualified individuals, whose criminal backgrounds prohibited them from providing direct care; and billed for services by untrained home health aides.
Further, Jama provided false documents to his tax preparer, claiming $0 in taxable income for 2013 and 2014. In fact, his taxable income for those years was approximately $167,000 and $301,000 respectively. As a result, the IRS sustained a loss of approximately $126,000 in tax liability.
Continue readingfor more on his tax scams. Then check this out—a bunch of verbiage about how bad his crimes were and how “just” his sentence of 18 months is! Ohio Republican AG Yost: His sentence is “just.”
“The public rightfully expects and trusts that those who provide health care services are competent and qualified”, said Lamont Pugh III, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General – Chicago Region. “The utilization of unqualified personnel coupled with the billing of federally funded health care programs for their services puts a patient’s health and safety at risk, and wastes taxpayer dollars.The OIG along with our federal and state partners will continue to identify and hold accountable those who choose to engage in this type of criminal activity.”
[….] “This is a deliberate, coldhearted violation of the public trust,” Ohio Attorney General Yost said. “This joint investigation and prosecution was equally deliberate, and the sentence is just.”
What do you think? Is 18 months behind bars “just?” And, what are the odds he will be paying restitution amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars! Maybe “just” would be deportation back to his homeland!
***If you are new to Frauds and Crooks, see (in my Welcome post) that a film being produced about the joys of diversity in Columbus, Ohio helped inspire me to undertake this new project!
Even if you are a subscriber and read my posts on your phone or in e-mails, visit occasionally (click here) for more information. For example, see “Trending” in the right hand side bar? Those are the posts that are the most popular with readers in recent days.
Last week 66-year-old Jayam Krishna Iyer was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to repay $52,000 in false claims for Medicare reimbursement after years of dispensing dangerous pain meds to patients she didn’t even see!
Dr. Iyer leaving court last September after admitting guilt. Expressed no remorse! https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/clearwater-pain-doctor-admits-to-medicare-fraud-and-surrenders-license/1457146533
What is up with these Indian doctors, we recently had another story of an Indian pain doctor in Michigan,see here.
From News India:
Indian-American doctor in Florida sentenced to prison for fraud
An Indian-American doctor in Clearwater, Florida was sent to prison Jan. 30, after being convicted for health care fraud. U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. sentenced Jayam Krishna Iyer, 66, to six months in federal prison for committing health care fraud, and ordered Iyer to forfeit more than $52,000 in health care fraud proceeds. He also ordered her to pay restitution to the Medicare and Medicaid programs. In addition, the court ordered Iyer to forfeit her Florida medical license, permanently excluding her from participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. And, Iyer agreed to surrender her Drug Enforcement Agency registration number, which had been used to prescribe controlled substances, and not to reapply for a DEA registration number for at least 20 years.
According to the press release from the U.S. Attorney for Middle District of Florida, based on court documents, Iyer owned and operated Creative Medical Center, on Druid Road East in Clearwater. The center functioned as a pain management clinic; Iyer conducted office visits and wrote prescriptions for controlled substances, including oxycodone, morphine, and fentanyl.
Beginning in July 2011 and continuing through December 2017, Iyer carried out a scheme to defraud Medicare by billing for face-to-face office visits with Medicare and Medicaid patients, when, in fact, certain patients had not gone to Iyer’s office and had not been examined by her on the claimed dates, prosecutors found.
Instead, family members of patients had visited Iyer’s office, where she issued prescriptions for Schedule II controlled substances, including oxycodone, to the family members in the patients’ names. Iyer thereby violated a Florida law requiring doctors to perform an in-person office visit and examination of each patient before issuing Schedule II controlled substance prescriptions.
More here.
Some additional information on Dr. Iyer is hereat Tampa’s WFLA in September when she admitted her guilt.
Clearwater pain doctor admits to medicare fraud and surrenders license
On Aug. 31, Dr. Iyer signed an agreement with federal prosecutors in Tampa admitting guilt to one felony count of Medicare fraud that will cost her at least $51,000 in restitution in addition to giving up her medical career. She also faces a possible fine of up to $250,000 and as much as 10 years in prison. Iyer did not express any remorse before, during or after the hearing, but in court freely admitted to stealing from taxpayers through Medicare fraud for a period of at least six years in her practice at the Creative Heath Center located at 1210 Druid Road in Clearwater.
[….] After a public records request, the Pinellas Medical Examiner sent 8 On Your Side an eight-page list of drugs prescribed by Iyer , including fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone and dilaudid, that turned up in various Medical Examiner investigations of suspicious deaths.
None of those ME cases resulted in a criminal prosecution of Iyer. She has also faced six malpractice lawsuits filed in Pinellas civil court according to court records.
[….] The physician who earned her medical degree in India said she is a U.S. citizen so she does not face a threat of deportation for her felony conviction.
Go here for the rest of the story and to see the news clip.
I think we have a tendency to think doctors are caring and compassionate and most of all not scammers, but these cases of medical doctors, often ‘new American’ medical doctors, and their involvement in fueling America’s prescription drug epidemic are starting to pile up. I think they need more publicity so that maybe more of you will be able to identify these frauds in your own communities. Where is the national media?
The case involves American crooks, nursing homes, doctors, hospital workers, and over a billion in lost taxpayer dollars. Editor: One of my readers is urging me to write something about American frauds, crooks and criminals so I’ve picked this news about a case the federal government says is its largest bust (so far). (Incidentally, the charity fraud posts like the one I wrote about yesterday are about Americans too!)
Today’s story is about former ‘one-percenter’ Philip Esformes and his father Rabbi Morris Esformes and their nursing home empire.
From the Miami Heraldon Tuesday,
Once among the ‘1 percent,’ executive faces $1 billion Medicare fraud trial
Not long ago, Miami Beach executive Philip Esformes was living quite comfortably among America’s “1 percent,” raking in millions from his healthcare business, gobbling up pricey real estate and darting around the country in chartered jets. Philip Esformes has been held behind bars since his arrest in July 2016.
Then, in a flash, his luxurious lifestyle went poof: FBI agents arrested Esformes in July 2016 and he suddenly became the poster boy for the biggest Medicare fraud case in the country. He was charged with bilking $1 billion out of the federal healthcare program for the elderly and disabled, while his vast business assets and bank accounts were frozen. Worse, Esformes, 50, was ordered held without bail at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. Esformes was back in court Monday for one final hearing before he goes to trial by himself on Feb. 11. Once always tan and fit, he looked wan and frail as his defense team tried in vain to delay the start of trial. They sought more time to review the Justice Department’s long list of patients who prosecutors say received no services or medically unnecessary treatment at Esformes’ Miami-Dade chain of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities.
[….] Esformes is standing trial alone because all of his co-conspirators have already pleaded guilty, including a physician’s assistant, Arnaldo Carmouze, and a former Larkin Community Hospital outpatient director, Odette Barcha. In January, both admitted that they recycled Medicare patients through the hospital and Esformes’ network of nursing homes and ALFs in an elaborate bribery scheme that prosecutors say was orchestrated by the healthcare executive.
Carmouze, 59, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare by accepting bribes for making patient referrals to Larkin and Esformes’ healthcare facilities. Barcha, 52, pleaded guilty to conspiring to pay bribes to physicians to refer patients to Larkin and receiving kickbacks herself to move patients into Esformes’ facilities.
Read the story, the list of charges is stunning, including this one:
See a timeline of more than two decades of scams involving Philip and his father Rabbi Morris Esformes here: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-esformes-timeline-met-20161002-story.html
Esformes is also accused of referring his own network of patients to convicted healthcare-fraud offenders, including Guillermo and Gabriel Delgado, who are serving prison time. The brothers admitted swindling Medicare for mental-health, prescription-drug, and home-healthcare services, and they ultimately helped federal investigators target the Miami Beach executive.
According to the indictment, the brothers paid some kickbacks for the patients by disguising them as payments for escort services for Esformes as well as related travel and hotel expenses. Esformes was also charged with obstructing justice because prosecutors say he plotted in 2015 with the Delgado brothers to help one of them leave Miami for Israel to avoid trial.
More here.
For those interested in more on the cheaters, see this local news storyfrom 2016 about divorce court proceedings where Philip’s ex-wife said he believed that “money is king.”
Accused wealthy fraudster’s alleged parenting style: ‘Money is king’
Are you keeping tabs of loved ones in nursing homes? Are they receiving treatment they don’t need while the facility bills Medicare? Or are they perhaps keeping a rehab patient longer than is necessary simply to milk the system, a system that is predictedto be insolvent by 2026?
Imagine “Medicare for all” that the Dems continue to clamor for!
So what do you do? Use the words “foreigner,” “alien” or “illegal alien” (or “illegal immigrant”) when appropriate and definitely have fun with “new American!”
The latest news in the case of 68-year-old Nagy Mohamed Abdelhamed ripping off the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the US is
