3 Accused of $13-Million Medicare Fraud

NEW YORK —  Three health clinic operators invented up to 12,000 phony patient visits a month to steal $13.3 million in the nation’s largest fraud by a Medicaid provider, a state prosecutor charged Wednesday.

A state judge signed a temporary restraining order freezing $39 million in property owned by Sheldon Weinberg and his sons, including a Rolls-Royce, a Corvette and two Trump Tower apartments, until an Aug. 19 hearing, Deputy Atty. Gen. Edward J. Kuriansky said.

A Brooklyn grand jury handed up a 65-count indictment charging Weinberg, his sons, Jay and Ronald, and his corporation with the alleged thefts. They operate the Bed-Stuy Health Care Corp. in Brooklyn, which runs two licensed medical and dental clinics in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick neighborhoods.

The corporation “is accused of systematically looting more than $13 million of the $32 million it received from Medicaid for supposedly treating the city’s poor over the past seven years,” Kuriansky said.

The alleged conspiracy started in April, 1980, when Jay and Ronald Weinberg reportedly directed an employee to begin manually creating and submitting false Medicaid invoices, Kuriansky charged.

In October, 1984, Jay Weinberg asked a billing company employee to design computer programs that could generate phony claims and medical charts for as many as 12,000 fictitious patient-visits a month, he charged.

In addition, Jay Weinberg and Ronald Scaglione, a Brooklyn contractor, were charged with setting fire to the Doctor’s Medical Center in October, 1983. The company allegedly collected $53,702 in fraudulent insurance claims.

Dawn Torres, the clinic’s co-administrator, was charged with lying to the grand jury when she swore that “Joe Wade,” a “ghost employee,” had worked at the Bed-Stuy facility, Kuriansky said.