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!
Editor:Frauds and Crooks is one month old today!
On January first, when Iwelcomed youto my new blog, I said my first priority was to counter the media reports that have begun to spew from the Open Borders propaganda machine about how migrants of all stripes are just the ticket for saving America’s economy while bringing the joys of diversity to you, the deplorables.
And so it is funny thatthis news from Utica, NY published yesterday is exactly what I warned about one month ago.
You will be seeing news like this from sea to shining sea in the lead-up to the 2020 Presidential contest.
The Cities Refugees Saved
Of course, I question the premise of the story from CityLab in the first place. Why must we save a city that is no longer providing jobs or has been poorly run by Democrats for decades?
First just so you know here are the ‘brains’ behind the New American Economypropaganda machine. Tell me if this bunch has anything more on their minds than cheap immigrant labor and more Democrat voters! CityLab calls the New American Economy, a bipartisan immigration reform group!
This is my post from earlier this month on the New American Economy. CityLabreports that the New American Economy gang has teamed up (has hired) a film company to put together a film that will showcase Utica’s booming refugee-driven economy. (They love films!) Symbol of the NEW Utica: Historic Methodist Church becomes a mosque
Film maker Adam Bedient (director of photography and editor at Off Ramp Films) says he grew up nearby and it was just a dying city but now, joy of joys the Bosnian Muslims that Bill Clinton welcomed to America have turned the city around.
Now, he’s working on a full-length feature about the refugee communities in Utica, and when he drives through town, he finds it simmering with new life. Old buildings are getting refurbished. Construction cranes bob up and down. And at the center of town is a long-vacant historic Methodist church that has been renovated and converted into a beautiful mosque—a symbol of the new Utica.
The CitiLabstory goes on to report how the city is thriving. You can read it yourself.
When you see news like this, look to see if they have included any mention of problems, like the one I reported at Refugee Resettlement Watch in 2015 about the school funding crisis when the city of Utica sued the state of New York for a refugee-created school funding shortfall.
See if they mention anything about dollars from Washington (from you) that fuel the local ‘new American’ economy via welfare—food stamps, housing subsidies, healthcare, federal grants for myriad refugee/immigrant services, grants to non-profits that service migrants and so forth.
In other words , is Utica a prime example of simply shifting federal tax dollars to a dying city? Useful graphic from the story. Heads up if you live in one of those cities, you might be next for a propaganda film about your growing refugee population. At RRW I wrote about problems in almost every one of them!
CityLab goes on (as expected) to bash the President and White House policy staffer Stephen Miller saying they don’t know what they are talking about when they express concerns about the cost of more refugee resettlement or any issues of safety and security. You can read it all here.
The story wraps with a quote from Bedient about that on-going debate,
This kind of wrangling over the true impact of refugees doesn’t get much traction in Utica, where refugees now make up almost a quarter of the city’s population, Bedient says. It’s not really up for debate at this point—“it’s a part of the city’s identity now,” he says.
Bottomline, the New American Economy and the Open Borders cabal have decided, there is no longer any debate, so shut up!
Here is what I don’t get!
Utica, has been paraded out for over a decade as a city saved by refugees, but no group on the immigration control side of the debate has ever (to my knowledge) gone to Utica to investigate the claims and counter them. Why is that?
I actually had to laugh when I saw the Associated Press story headlined:
St. Paul man sentenced for income tax preparation fraud
It is the kind of a headline I’ve joked about many times: St. Paul “man”(nothing to see, move along!). The short APstory never mentions Kenneth Mwase’s African connections and his earlier flee from justice. As is so often the case with foreign fraudsters, I could not find any photo of the convicted tax cheat Mwase! Here is APand then I’ll give you some more important facts from the US Justice Department about the gang of ‘new Americans’ and how they and their Minnesota clients defrauded us—American taxpayers.
A St. Paul man has been sentenced to about 10 years in prison for directing a fraudulent tax return preparation business. Kenneth Mwase and four co-defendants were accused of preparing and filing more than 2,000 fraudulent individual income tax returns in 2006 through 2008. The defendants operated Primetime Tax Services, which had three storefronts in the Minneapolis area.
The 54-year-old Mwase pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, aggravated identity theft and failing to appear at sentencing. Mwase admitted overseeing a conspiracy that caused a tax loss of more than $2.5 million dollars.
What the AP isn’t telling you!
Hereare some more important facts about the not-so-simple story from the Department of Justice (hat tip: Leo). Sorry this is long, but I want you to see the full story!
A Minneapolis based tax return preparer was sentenced to serve 121 months in prison today for managing and directing a fraudulent return-preparation business, Primetime Tax Services Inc.
Kenneth Mwase, who also fraudulently used the name Chatonda Khofi, 54, of St. Paul, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of failure to appear at sentencing.
[….]
In April 2014, the defendant was charged in a seventy-count second superseding indictment, along with codefendants Ishmael Kosh, 39, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Amadou Sangaray, 36, of New York, New York, and Francis Saygbay, 43, of Minneapolis, and David Mwangi, 47, of Arlington, Texas,for their involvement with Primetime, a tax preparation business with three storefronts in the Minneapolis area. Together with his co-defendants, Mwase prepared and filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over 2,000 fraudulent individual income tax returnson behalf of customers of Primetime for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Mwase and his co-defendants also prepared approximately 1,700 fraudulent state income tax returns filed with the state of Minnesota for those years.
In November 2014, Mwase plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the Government and one count of aggravated identity theft. As part of his plea agreement, Mwase admitted overseeing a conspiracy that caused a tax loss of over $2.5 million dollars. Mwase and co-defendants Kosh, Sangaray, and Saygbay established Primetime’s flagship location in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in late 2006. They then prepared tax returns in 2007, 2008, and 2009, for Primetime’s customers, which reported false dependents, fake business income and losses, inflated deductions, inflated credits, and false filing statuses, in order to get their customers inflated refunds. The defendants maintained control over their customers’ IRS refunds by instructing that those refunds be sent directly to Primetime. They then caused their preparation fee to be directly withdrawn from the refund. When a customer came to pick up their refund check or debit card, the defendants sometimes escorted that customer to a check cashing location or ATM and demanded additional cash.
Mwase was scheduled to be sentenced on August 18, 2016, following the two-week trial of co-defendants Kosh and Sangaray, which occurred in September 2015, and the guilty plea of co-defendant Saygbay, in November 2015. However, on August 7, 2016, he fled to South Africa, using a fake identity and a fraudulently-obtained Zimbabwean passport. In April 2017, Mwase was charged with one count of failure to appear for sentencing. With the assistance of the United States Department of State, INTERPOL, and Zimbabwean and South African authorities, Mwase was arrested in South Africa in May 2018. Over the years, Mwase used multiple fake identities, including passing himself off as Chatonda Khofi, an individual born in Washington, D.C. to diplomats from Malawi. In October 2018, following an extradition request from the United States, Mwase was surrendered to the custody of the United States Marshals Service and returned to Minnesota to face sentencing. On November 16, 2018, Mwase pled guilty to the charge of failing to appear for sentencing. Mwase’s co-conspirators were previously sentenced to prison.
So typical!
A little more to the story than the AP wants to give you and I suspect that is because this bunch are immigrants, maybe even illegal immigrants, and the real story does not further the mainstream media’s pre-approved portrayal of “new Americans.”
And, by the way, every one of Mwase’s clients is as guilty as he is! So when are the feds going to track down the 2,000 or more Minnesota customers who went along with the scheme?
Endnote:As I continue to build an archive of stories here, note the tags at the bottom. I am tagging stories by state (if that applies), so you will have ready access to information on frauds and crooks in your state!
You might have caught a bit of this story on the national news because it involves a former stripper hired to help sell the drugs.
From the Boston Globe:
The federal government, which has been accused of failing to hold drug companies to account for the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic, hopes to dispel that impression Monday when the first criminal trial of pharmaceutical executives who marketed a painkiller begins. ‘New American’ John Nath Kapoor was born in India John N. Kapoor, a onetime billionaire and founder of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, is scheduled to go on trial in US District Court in Boston along with four former company executives on charges that they acted more like mobsters than pharmaceutical executives when they sold a brand of fentanyl, a powerful and addictive opioid.
In a trial expected to last up to three months, federal prosecutors will try to convince a jury that the five defendants paid bribes and kickbacks to physicians in a nationwide racketeering conspiracy. The payments allegedly induced doctors to prescribe Subsys, an under-the-tongue fentanyl spray approved to treat severe cancer-related pain, for patients who hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer.
The case features several explosive allegations. Prosecutors say that Insys set up a sham “speakers program” to funnel cash to doctors, adjusted payments based on how many prescriptions doctors wrote, misrepresented patients’ medical histories to dupe insurers into covering Subsys for people without cancer, and even hired a woman who was a former stripper and escort service manager as a key sales executive.
[….] The criminal case marks a rare instance of the government using the criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to go after corporate executives.The statute was approved in 1970, chiefly to prosecute organized crime figures.
[….]
Kapoor is the most prominent of the five Insys defendants. A 75-year-old shaggy-haired entrepreneur who was raised in India, lives in Phoenix, and was — until recently — on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, Kapoor founded Chandler, Ariz.-based Insys in 1990. For more than a decade, he largely funded it out of his own pocket.
If found guilty, Kapoor could get up to 20 years in the slammer.
Much more here.
Pharmaceutical company fraud investigations should be applauded by all Americans, on the political Left and Right, especially as it relates to the deadly opioid crisis destroying lives in middle America.
I’m guess that almost everyone knows someone addicted to pain meds?
This story reminds me to remind you to check your medicare statements carefully to be sure some doctor isn’t billing you for meds that you didn’t receive or for an amount larger than you actually were prescribed.
This story should warm your heart—we are nabbing at least some of the cheaters!
This time it was by setting a trap for them with the creation of a fake university with all the trappings of a real college. The feds fake University of Farmington was located in this building says the Detroit News
Thanks to theDetroit News for another juicy story.
Feds used fake Michigan university in immigration sting
Federal agents used a fake university in Farmington Hills to lure alleged phony foreign students who were trying to stay in the United States illegally.
The University of Farmington had no staff, no instructors, no curriculum and no classes but was utilized by undercover Homeland Security agents to identify people involved in immigration fraud, according to federal grand jury indictments unsealed Wednesday.
Eight student recruiters were charged with participating in a conspiracy to help at least 600 foreign citizens stay in the U.S. illegally, according to the indictments, which describe a novel investigation that dates to 2015 but intensified one month into President Donald Trump’s tenure as part of a broader crackdown on illegal immigration. Simultaneously Wednesday, federal agents arrested dozens of University of Farmington students in a nationwide sweep. The students were arrested on immigration violations and face possible deportation, according to a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most of the recruiters and students involved are originally from India, according to prosecutors.
“It’s creative and it’s not entrapment,” said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “The government can put out the bait, but it’s up to the defendants to fall for it.”
Those charged include:
• Bharath Kakireddy, 29, of Lake Mary, Florida.
• Aswanth Nune, 26, of Atlanta.
• Suresh Reddy Kandala, 31, of Culpeper, Virginia.
• Phanideep Karnati, 35, of Louisville, Kentucky.
• Prem Kumar Rampeesa, 26, of Charlotte, North Carolina.
• Santosh Reddy Sama, 28, of Fremont, California.
• Avinash Thakkallapally, 28, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
• Naveen Prathipati, 29, of Dallas.
[….] “… the university was being used by foreign citizens as a ‘pay to stay’ schemewhich allowed these individuals to stay in the United States as a result of of foreign citizens falsely asserting that they were enrolled as full-time students in an approved educational program and that they were making normal progress toward completion of the course of study,” the indictment reads.
More here. Please go read it and send traffic to the story because the reporter, Robert Snell, has been doing great work on fraud cases.
Are you thinking about this? As we focus virtually all mainstream media coverage on the crisis at our southern border (yes, it is important), the national media is keeping us in the dark about some huge stories involving illegal immigrants (and legal ones !) who are ripping us off through fraud and other criminal activity that we must suffer and pay for.
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 predicted to be insolvent by 2026?
