(New York) American justice charged on Friday 11 people accused of being part of a network based in Russia which has swindled medication, health insurance covering over 65, $ 10.6 billion.
This staggering fraud was based on a well -oiled system, according to the indictment made public by New York federal prosecutors.
Between August 2022 and September 2024, the network bought dozens of companies of medical equipment empowered to make requests for reimbursements from Medicare.
These companies then ensured that they had provided various urinary tracts-catheters, splints, devices measuring blood sugar, etc. More than a million Americans whose personal data had been stolen, and obtained social security reimbursements.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans expressed their concerns to Medicare and his subcontractors after receiving services indicating that they had allegedly received medical equipment which they had in fact had not received, which would have been prescribed by doctors whom they had never consulted,” the prosecutors in the indictment.
The network was “based in Russia” and “submitted or submitted more than $ 10 billion in fraudulent Medicare requests,” said the accusation.
He “evolved constantly”, constantly acquiring new medical equipment companies, which he had managed by nominees, and by stealing personal data from new insured to justify his requests.
The 11 defendants accused on Friday are mainly Estonians, as well as a Czech and an American who belonged to the network. They are prosecuted for fraud to health insurance and money laundering.
Driving American health insurance thanks to medical equipment companies is a vein regularly used by offenders, as there are few controls on the legitimacy of the reimbursement requests they submit.
In 2019, the Department of Justice had discovered a scam that had gathered medication of more than a billion dollars, thanks to false reimbursement requests for back and knee -corsets.
In 2023, 18 defendants had been charged for helping to extort nearly $ 500 million, thanks to false invoices for COVID-19 tests that had never been carried out.
