SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Photo by Erica Sherman

There’s a new class of despicable low-life in the neighborhood: the Rapid Repair con artist. According to an e-mail blast from Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, his office has been fielding complaints from residents about fraudsters who – somehow – got a hold of the Rapid Repairs client directory and are shaking down vulnerable Sandy victims.

Hopefully, once they’re off the streets, we’ll find out how in the world the city let a database of Sandy victims in dire straits fall into the hands of criminals.

Here’s the e-mail from Cymbrowitz:

I’ve received a few reports from residents who tell me that scam artists pretending to be from the city’s Rapid Repairs program have been showing up at peoples’ homes offering to do work, such as remove a boiler, or have asked residents for payment for services. Apparently the scammers have gotten hold of the Rapid Repairs directory, which contains names and addresses of residents who require repairs.

Let me be clear on this: Rapid Repairs will NEVER ask you for payment. If they do ask for payment, they are not from the Rapid Repairs program. Do not let this person into your home!

In order to protect yourself and your loved ones from these scam artists, here are some tips you should know:

• All Rapid Repairs workers are required to carry an ID and badge, identifying them as a Rapid Repairs worker. Always ask to see the badge and ID of the person who says they are from Rapid Repairs.
• When Rapid Repairs comes to your house for the first time, you will be given a card with the phone number of your Rapid Repairs site supervisor. If you are not sure if the person at your door is from Rapid Repairs, contact your site supervisor immediately.
• If you feel endangered by the person at your front door, call 911 immediately.

Home repair frauds increase following major storms, and there are corrupt people who will try to prey on those who have already lost so much. As we work through this recovery process together, I want to make sure everyone stays safe, and that means knowing how to protect yourself from con artists.

As always, I’m here to assist you. Please feel free to call my office at (718) 743-4078, emailcymbros@assembly.state.ny.us or visit my temporary district office at 2658 Coney Island Avenue (between Avenues W and X), which is open Monday – Thursday from 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. and on Fridays until 5 p.m.

Janna Doheny, after surrendering to authorities. (Source: Brooklyn DA)

Janna Doheny, the owner of multiple units inside Brighton Beach’s posh Oceana condominium development, is charged with bilking more than $29,000 from Medicaid over the course of eight years, according to a new indictment revealed by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.

Doheny, 43, filed falsified documents for Medicaid, claiming her only source of income for her and her daughter was just $1,550 a month from her job at an adult entertainment establishment in Queens, and that her savings and investments totaled less than $5,000.

But investigators claim that Doheny wasn’t as cash strapped as her Medicaid application stated. They say Doheny lived the high life, making pricey purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, Victoria’s Secret and Amazon, as well as getting professional glamour shots in skimpy swimwear while vacationing at a luxury resort in Arizona – a discovery they found by perusing her profile on a Russian-language social networking site.

“Lying to the system to receive Medicaid is a theft of taxpayer dollars and will not be tolerated,” said Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar, whose agency assisted in the investigation. “At HRA, we maintain the integrity of public assistance programs by providing benefits to those who are eligible and investigating those who ignore the rules.”

Investigators also found that Doheny not only purchased several condo units at Oceana between 2002 and 2010 – where price tags range from $500,000 to $2 million – but that she also owned property in Bay Ridge, Long Beach and South Florida.

The complaint goes on to state that Doheny deposited more than $100,000 annually into several bank accounts in her own name and the name of her business, Oceana Ventures, as well as a pile of cash totaling $170,000 in a safe deposit box on Long Island.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, along with the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General and the Human Resources Administration, started to take a closer look at Doheny’s holdings after being tipped off to the Oceana purchases.

Vadim Vasilenko has been in jail since 2007 for allegedly running a money laundering credit card scam operation that involved $47 million dollars, however he has yet to have his day in court.

After years of appeals, arguments, and false starts, Vasilenko is still imprisoned without the possibility for parole and without a firm trial date in place. Getting desperate for any kind of help, Vasilenko has taken to the skies, flying banners over Brighton Beach this month asking both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for help.

With no response from the presidential candidates, Vasilenko is now hoping that the Virgin Mary will come to his aid, as he plans to fly another plane pleading to Mother Mary herself, according to UPI.

As Vaslikenko awaits his call on divine intervention, you can watch him plead his case to Eyewitness News.

Honoring real survivors at a Holocaust Memorial Park ceremony. Photo by Erica Sherman

A disturbing scheme that has been running since 1994, which bilked a Holocaust survivors fund of $57 million, may finally be coming to a close. The scam was uncovered in 2009 after an FBI sting, and a year later the US Attorney’s Office announced indictments against 11 employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference. Thirty-one people have been charged so far.

Several individuals from Brighton Beach collaborated with employees of  the Claims Conference, which manages the funds, and submitted applications for victims of the Holocaust. The problem was that the claims that were submitted and approved were for victims who did not exist, or people who were not qualified to receive the funds.

The employees received kickbacks for approving the fraudulent applications and the ringleaders who submitted the falsified documents received unlawful Holocaust reparations.

Valentina Romashova, who stole $150,000 from Holocaust survivors, has recently admitted her role in the scheme and plead guilty in court. She has been ordered to return the money and can serve up to five years in prison for her participation in the scheme, according to the New York Daily News.

Romashova approved almost 5,000 fake applications.

An ex-employee of the fund program, Yevgeniya Abramovich, was also sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay back $201,000, wrote the Jewish Press.

We in Southern Brooklyn are no strangers to healthcare fraud.

We’ve got the Midwood couple that allegedly collected more than $108,000 in benefits, while living it up in lavish homes and luxury automobiles.

We’ve got the Brighton Beach proctologist that billed for more procedures than any other proctologist in the nation – many of which, prosecutors say, were bogus, including charging more than $60,000 for 85 hemorrhoidectomies on a single patient in 20 months.

We’ve got bogus pharmacies – allegedly, of course – and a slew of local operations swept up in the two largest medical fraud busts in the nation’s history.

In fact, the number of busts around here suggests that our area may just have the highest rates of healthcare fraud, per capita, in the nation. But what’s it costing American taxpayers?

About $80 billion a year, with Medicare fraud alone expected to cost $1 trillion over the next decade, according to a new infographic produced by ComplianceAndSafety.com.

See the infographic after the jump to understand the sheer scale of medical fraud in the nation, how it happens, and where that lost revenue could be better used.

Source: Offices of Charles Hynes

For more than six years, Rivka Baror, 51, and her husband Avraham Baror, 64, fraudulently collected $108,715.57 in Medicaid and food-stamp benefits while using phony names to hide assets, including a home and several luxury automobiles, prosecutors allege.

Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes and Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar announced the indictment of the husband and wife team for their participation in the crimes, which spanned from January 1, 2006, through June 30, 2012.

According to the defendants’ welfare application forms filed under the names Avraham Baror and Rivka Baror, the couple claimed to have minimal income and no assets, which enables them to receive food-stamp and Medicaid benefits.

However, investigators from HRA and the District Attorney’s office uncovered documents showing the defendants used aliases to maintain bank accounts and purchase property, cars and vacations.

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Despite the fact that he confessed to accepting bribes and now sits in jail on charges of corruption, ex-State Senator Carl Kruger‘s campaign committee has over $417,000, according to the New York Post.

And, apparently, the campaign is keeping the reserves for the pol’s potential payday when he gets out of the big house.

The Post said that the committee, “Friends of Carl,” continued to exist after Kruger left the Senate in December of 2011, and even after he was placed in jail last month. They have not collected money in the past six months, yet they have been paying their bills and even kept some money aside for Kruger after he finishes serving his seven-year sentence.

In addition, Kruger is receiving a taxpayer-funded pension of $65,000 a year.

State election law says that political campaigns can use “contributions received by a candidate or a political committee may be expended for any lawful purpose,” said the New York Post.

However, the law continues and says that the money cannot be used for personal use unconnected to the political campaign. Yet law experts said that almost all expenses can be connected to politics, and therefore, officials can do whatever they’d like with the money.

Here’s how Capital Confidential, which first reported on the leftover warchest, puts it:

Recall: under New York’s current campaign finance laws, YOU CAN DO BASICALLY WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT WITH CAMPAIGN MONEY. Like buy a car. Or have your widow continue to spend it five years after you die. Legal legal legal. S’all good. This is, in my opinion, one of those things that makes the Empire State great.

Sen. Liz Krueger has proposed a bill to eventually let campaign committees die. It may shock you to learn that it hasn’t advanced at all.

Authorities conducting a field operation targeting ambulette service providers in Sheepshead Bay issued $7,600 in fines and seized two vans in just one day.

The Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG) and the Taxi and Limousine Commission teamed up to investigate potential fraudulent activities among ambulette services, stopping the vehicles on and around Coney Island Avenue and Coney Island Hospital on Tuesday, July 10.

According to OMIG, 15 investigators were deployed, yeilding:

• Four unlicensed or unqualified drivers;
• Two vehicles not licensed by TLC – both vans were seized;
• Ten summonses issued for lack of paperwork or proper decals on display;
• A total of $7,600 in fines based on the summonses.

Investigators also verified that all passengers involved were Medicaid recipients.

“Allowing untrained drivers to operate these vehicles in New York is an expensive roll of the dice,” said Medicaid Inspector General James Cox. “The millions of dollars spent on these services risk the lives of pedestrians, motorists and patients, all the while ripping off taxpayers. The streets of New York are safer today, thanks to this operation. “

The Sheepshead Bay field operation scored a bigger yield than the TLC-OMIG pilot program, which took place last month along Queens Boulevard. There they issued eight summonses and seized one van.

However, the Queens operation led to a valuable discovery that could save taxpayers money. Here’s how the TLC puts it:

Based on information provided by OMIG from the June 12 operation, TLC discovered that some ambulette companies may have used tactics that do not comply with New York State and New York City rules, including subcontracting vehicles and drivers. TLC investigators used that information during an independent transportation surveillance at a metropolitan hospital, leading to the seizure of six more ambulettes from a company that had committed a variety of infractions. OMIG and TLC will collaborate on further investigations of that company to determine if Medicaid had been overcharged for services based on evidence gathered from that operation. Further action will be taken as appropriate.

Helene Weinstein

Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein has sponsored The Foreclosure Fraud Prevention Act of 2012, which would increase the penalties for deceitful practices relating to home foreclosures if passed.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman introduced this bill in the New York State Legislature on Friday. This bill includes the introduction of criminal penalties and jail time to those who knowingly participate in fraudulent business practices concerning foreclosures. Managers of residential mortgage businesses who are aware of fraudulent foreclosure practices performed by their employees will also suffer these consequences.

“For many middle class New Yorkers, their life savings is in their home,” Schneiderman said to PostStarNews. “To take away people’s homes under fraudulent circumstances is a crime deserving of jail time.”

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Sachakov

A Brighton Beach proctologist was convicted last week in Brooklyn Federal court for $3.5 million of fraudulent practices involving Medicare and several private healthcare organizations.

Boris Sachakov of Colon and Rectal Care of New York in Brighton Beach, was arrested in October 2010 for fraudulent medical claims in which he said he performed more procedures than any other proctologist in the nation. However, investigators concluded he was merely billing insurance companies for no treatment at all – and, in some cases, totally implausible claims such as charging more than $60,000 for 85 hemorrhoidectomies on a single patient in 20 months.

According to the New York Post, Sachakov allegedly yelled and threatened to punch his prosecutors for pointing at him during his trial. A short hearing pertaining to this incident was held after the trail.

Sachacov faces up to 10 years in jail and a fine of $250,000. He has now been placed in custody, where he will stay until his official sentencing.