And this on o b watch :o
$163 million by whos math. ;D ;D Now put in a good CPA and just think what they could find.
NEW YORK — A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio.
The scheme's scope and sophistication "puts the traditional Mafia to shame," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a Manhattan news conference. "They ran a veritable fraud franchise."
Unlike other cases involving crooked medical clinics bribing people to sign up for unneeded treatments, the operation was "completely notional," Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office, said in a statement. "The whole doctor-patient interaction was a mirage."
The operation was under the protection of an Armenian crime boss, known in the former Soviet Union as a "vor," prosecutors said. The reputed boss, Armen Kazarian, was in custody in Los Angeles.
Bharara said it was the first time a vor — "the rough equivalent of a traditional godfather" — had been charged in a U.S. racketeering case.
I know it just has to a 100 % Bush problem. ::) More..... (http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20101013/US.Medicare.Fraud.Arrests/?cid=NET_SZHeadlineRSSLinks&attr=article_news_general_US.Medicare.Fraud.Arrests)
Well, if Obama can hand back a whole Russian spy ring (like with Ann Chapman), I guess this means we'll be paying for first-class travel and champagne for the outgoing "business leaders."
Only Americans commit crimes on American soil. Everyone else is a misunderstood foreigner who has no evil intentions against America, whatsoever.....
This isn't the largest medicare scam ever. There were several that were bigger. The "Wheeler Dealer" powerchair scam back in 2003 was over 350 million and in cities from Houston to San Diego to Dallas and a bunch of other cities too. That one was run by the Nigerian mafia. And then there was a Russian mafia scam with orthotics and prosthetics about 5 years ago in South Florida tha I think was close to 200 million. Also there were several hospital scams that got close to 100 million each. They tagged this one guy for performing over 100 heart surgeries that were not medically neceissary.
And don't even get me started on nursing homes and how they can defraud both medicare and medicaid.
This is a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that unusual.
Medicare and HMO scams are one of the biggest and it doesn;t take the Russian mob to perpetrate it either, I imagine some of our homegrown scam artists have been doing this for years, just like welfare scams.
Most of this stuff cannot go on except with the collusion of certain people in officialdom, sometimes doctors, Nurses or hospital staff
or people in the admin office.
Wiat until they get their hands on Obamaocare
Billy
Actually identity theft has more to do with it than anything else.