Blatant Medicaid fraud in Queens that AG Letitia James cant bother to notice

For fresh proof of how little New York authorities care about social-services fraud, consider the curious case of adult daycares in Flushing.Dr.Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, puts out that within a one-mile radius in the Queens neighborhood, a full 64 Social Adult Day Care centers operate, with thousands upon thousands of supposed elderly enrollees.This reeks: Over the past three years, such New York senior centers have generated $2.5 billion in billings, with $2.1 billion of that coming from Flushing.Flushing’s Medicaid-eligible senior population grew by 20% from 2018 to 2024, yet the number of seniors billed by social adult daycares surged by 390%.How convenient that electronic sign-up sheets are usually the only thing SADCs need to provide to get reimbursed.To be clear, some centers have real enrollees, but then again they bribe seniors with monthly $500 kickbacks — but that payout drops to $300 if they actually show up for services.Nor do the scams stop there: Centers team up with pharmacies and durable medical equipment stores (one Flushing entrepreneur was running three such “stores” out of his apartment), steering enrollees toward unneeded medications or wheelchairs to generate more taxpayer reimbursements.

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Never miss a story.And it would all continue on, absent Team Trump’s war on fraud.Plainly, state Attorney General Tish James and other top officials just don’t care; they see it as free money (no matter how much goes to fraudsters), as government-funded personal assistance has become the state’s fastest-growing industry — jumping from $2.5 billion in 2019 to $12 billion in 2026. Under James’ “leadership,” New York ranks 49th among the states for criminal investigations per billion of Medicai...