Exclusive | Alleged $38M adult daycare scam busted in Brooklyn snaring Pakistani community leaders who cozied up to Dems
A prominent Pakistani-American businessman who spent years cozying up to powerful Democrats stands accused of being part of a $38 million Medicaid scam.Civic leader and well-known Brooklyn Community Board 13 member Pervez Siddiqui, 78, was arrested Monday along with seven co-conspirators.They are alleged to have run a large-scale Medicaid kickback and false-billing scheme through two Social Adult Day Care (SADC) centers in Brooklyn: APNA Adult Daycare and Ashiana Social Adult Daycare.The scam ran from 2019 through December 2025, feds allege, with seniors being signed up for daycares they rarely or never attended, then getting a cut of the Medicaid payment.“Marketers are going around looking for the Medicaid card.They stop people on the street, at bus stops.
They go into doctor’s offices.They go into NYCHA [government housing] where they know people are low income.
They ask, ‘do you have a Medicaid card?” a source with knowledge of the investigation told The Post.Siddiqui, who owns around 15 pharmacies in New Jersey, is prolific in local political circles and a regular donor to Democrat campaigns, sometimes shelling out over $10,000 a pop to local candidates, records show.And through his ties to another group he scored an intimate sit down with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in December 2025, pictures obtained by The Post show.Shazia Bibi (a.k.a.
Shazia Wattoo), Abdul Aziz, Shair Ali, and their recruiter co-defendants Zebun Ahmed, Josna Begum, Saira Khatoon, and Atia Shahnaz were also involved, according to the unsealed indictment against them.The gang paid cash bribes directly to New York Medicaid recipients to enroll at APNA or Ashiana—even though most never attended their facilities —and paid the recruiters kickbacks to refer patients, while submitting $38 million in fraudulent claims to New York Medicaid for services which were never provided, according to the indictment.To conceal the fraud, they created fake sign-in sheets far exceedi...