Posted on 10/14/2010 9:35:07 AM PDT by VU4G10
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.
Kazarian, 46, of Glendale, Calif., and two alleged ringleaders Davit Mirzoyan, 34, also of Glendale, and Robert Terdjanian, 35, of Brooklyn were named in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
After a fair trial and conviction, confiscate every single penny of their assets then deport everyone of them to an uninhabited island. No need to have the American taxpayer feed them, house them, give them medical care for xx number of years.
It’s so much easier to cheat with government insurance.
I thought Obama fixed this so eliminating fraud would pay for his new government insurance?
Where is Vic Mackey and his team?
These guys will post bail & bail out to Armenia & live in style.
“Most of the defendants “were Armenian nationals or immigrants and many maintained substantial ties to Armenia” and criminals there, the indictment said. Couriers would often carry cash proceeds from the fraud back to Armenia, it added.”
Our total lack of any immigration oversight will destroy this country.
DHS = Department of Homeland SURRENDER
“After a fair trial and conviction, confiscate every single penny of their assets then deport everyone of them to an uninhabited island. No need to have the American taxpayer feed them, house them, give them medical care for xx number of years.”
I have always liked the “Devil’s Island” concept. It’s surprising the French used it being the puss!es that they are. Bikini Island would be a good spot.
Yeah, losing millions of men in dozens of land wars with Germans, Muslims, English, Spaniards, and Dutch and maintaining the most steady of all European borders for 1000 years. Bunch of pussies.
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