Medicaid scam arrests in New York City have revealed an elaborate scheme of false Medicaid billings – all in a shameless exploitation of the indigent who needed shoes. In the indictment this week, investigators said that between October 2012 and September of last year, nine doctors and 14 other individuals fraudulently billed Medicaid for more than $7 million dollars. For these barefaced bilkers, the other shoe has dropped.
According to the New York Times on March 31, doctors in collusion with one another were “recruiting homeless people, prosecutors said, and whoever had a valid Medicaid card would be packed into a van and sent to medical clinics around New York City. There, after hours of unnecessary tests and fake diagnoses, the homeless people would be sent off with sneakers — selected from stacks of shoeboxes in the clinics’ basements. The doctors, staff members and billing specialists, meanwhile, would rack up hundreds or thousands of dollars per recruit in false Medicaid claims, prosecutors said.”