Ten Brooklyn residents were among more than 100 people rounded up in a nationwide crackdown on Medicaid and Medicare fraudsters who cost taxpayers more than $200 million, authorities said yesterday.
The biggest scam was a $57 million, three-year scheme run by seven Russian immigrants out of three clinics that fraudulently billed Medicare and Medicaid for doctor visits, diagnostic tests and physical therapy, the feds said.
Two suspects were “recruiters” who allegedly steered Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to the clinics.
The clinics’ operators fraudulently billed the government for care the patients never received, the feds say.
Three other men charged in the scheme were responsible for driving patients to their appointments, and paying them off.
Separately, the feds charged a physical therapist with submitting $12 million in false bills to the government from his practice in Midwood.
Kharkover, who is licensed to practice physical therapy, hired assistants not licensed to perform many services, and claimed to offer his treatments in patients’ homes, said his indictment.
Among the accused is Dr. Leonard Langman, a Park Slope neurologist accused of falsely billing Medicare and workers-compensation programs $250,000 between January 2006 and December 2009.
Authorities also announced yesterday the indictment of a Brooklyn doctor accused of billing the government $6.5 million for hemorrhoid removals he never performed.
“Health care fraud is not easy money,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in Washington.