Posted on 03/23/2005 3:47:22 AM PST by Liz
With a lavish apartment on Central Park West, an upstate mansion and garages full of Mercedes and BMWs, the millionaire Pustilnik family — Russian immigrant owners of medical clinics in Brooklyn and Manhattan — seemed to be living the American dream.
But the family's fortune was earned by insurance fraud and grand larceny, Manhattan prosecutors charged yesterday, announcing indictments that could put the 57-year-old mother, along with her son and his wife, behind bars for up to seven years.
The Pustilniks — who are also being investigated for ties to Russian organized crime — have been using their clinics to scam millions from insurance companies and the city Transit Authority, DA Robert Morgenthau said yesterday.
The scam — allegedly run for more than a decade — is elaborate.
Prosecutors say it began with a single crooked clinic, Omni Medical Care, set up in 1994 by the family patriarch, Grigory Pustilnik, on Ocean Avenue in Midwood, Brooklyn. The next year, a second was opened in lower Manhattan — Premier Medical Care, on University Place.
Grigory soon died; but his wife, Isabella, of Brighton Beach, allegedly took the reins, along with their son, Abraham, 33, and his psychologist wife, Inna, 31.
At both clinics, the insurance companies of car- and bus-accident victims were systematically overbilled — sometimes for care that was never even given, prosecutors said.
To make the scam work, Pustilniks allegedly paid salaries to a stable of crooked medical professionals...
The crooked doctors pretended to run the clinics and other specialty doctors' offices involved in the scheme, sometimes doing sham exams, sometimes just signing paperwork.
What was in it for the overbilled accident victim? Insurance paid for all the sham treatments; Meanwhile, the patient gained documentation of sham injuries they could then use to win lucrative pain-and-suffering lawsuits.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The Russian thieves ran this scam for a decade, underlining the stranglehold they have on US laws and public policy. No one dares question them. They also cultivate politicians. How much of the proceeds of the the pestilence Pustilnik family scam was pocketed by pandering politicians?
These people are scary. Whining about persecution---these Russians arrive in the US and are treated like royalty, with tax-subsidized government grants, tax-subsidized housing, and job set-asides waiting for them......jobs that are taken from taxpaying born-Americans. Their sense of entitlement to our hard-earned tax dollars is outrageous. There is no shame at all, just a free ride on the tax-subsidized gravy train.....plus all they can scam and steal.
The FBI just broke up a billion-dollar staged accidents scam run by these lowlifes who bilked Medicaid and auto insurance companies (which means law-abiding Americans must pay more due to these criminals).
Cable's History Channel did an excellent expose of the horrendous global magnitude of Russian organized crime migration. They come to the US pleading "persecution" and get on the gravy train to suck up US tax dollars.
One New York TV news report chronicled the lifestyle of an unemployed 30'ish Russian immigrant---a trained engineer--- picking up tax-subsidized government checks while his wife was lolling around getting her hair and nails done courtesy of US taxpayers......in Little Odessa, NY, where the bulk of Russians riding the US gravy train reside.
We can only hope this leads to many more investigations and arrests.
Deport them all with permanent bans on returning! You know the courts systems will do nothing, so why bother going through all the expense?
Russian Mafia operating at will in America....no shock there..Russia sends us the mafia and Mexico sends us the poor...
About 15 years ago when I was still driving( I am almost 80 you know), I was taking an older friend to the local VA clinic in my brand new car. We were going pretty slow as the light coming up had just changed to red. We came to a full stop about 8 to 10 feet in back of another car which was already stopped.
After I stopped, car in front actually went into REVERSE. I was amazed... I looked into the rear view mirror... THERE WAS A POLICE CAR!!
The car in front bumped my car... not hard... but hard enough to notice and put a dent in my bumper.
Then, a Black man in the front car... the driver... jumps out, starts cussing me and holding his neck and screaming!! He was yelling that I hit him!!
Then, his face went "all-weird" as he saw the LARGE BLACK POLICE OFFICER in the cruiser behind me get out with his ticket book in hand!!
His gig was up!!
Guess who got a ticket... NOT ME!!!
At any rate, the other driver had no insurance and he got fined for that as well. My insurance had to pay for the smallish dent on my new car. My rates went up, but at least one sham artist( and his team of crooked docs) did NOT get whiplash payments or his dented bumper fixed.
Once in a while, the good guys win one. But not often enough.
I think that often the insurance companies do not investigate suspicious claims. Is it because there are so many of them or they just find it cheaper to pay up? I wonder.
But, but liberals would be "offended" b/c that would not be "tolerant and compassionate" (/sarc).
Sarcasm aside, it becomes clearer and clearer that corrupt liberals are facilitators of this scam....they tout diversity and tolerance......aiding and abetting the undermining of our democrcy and our economy.....for their own slimy purposes.
the millionaire Pustilnik family — Russian immigrant owners of medical clinics in Brooklyn ==
Pustilnik is NOT russian name. It is rather ukranian from Odessa but more sure it is jewish.
No connection to Russia.
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