NYC adult daycare owners busted in $530K Medicaid fraud in Operation Golden Grift: DA
Two Staten Island adult daycare operators allegedly bilked Medicaid out of more than half a million dollars by billing for hundreds of seniors they never served — including some who were dead or out of the country, prosecutors said Wednesday.Yangsim Oum, 79, and her daughter, 49-year-old Juyone Choe — the respective owner and program director of SI Day Care Center, Inc.on Forest Avenue — were arrested Tuesday in an investigation dubbed “Operation Golden Grift” by the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office.The pair were slapped with a staggering 457-count indictment charging them with pocketing more than $530,000 in bogus billings in just four months from April 17 to August 25.That eye-watering sum included $13,000 for services supposedly provided to at least 32 seniors who turned out to be dead or overseas at the time, according to prosecutors.The mother-daughter duo was “one of Staten Island’s most lucrative con artists,” District Attorney Michael McMahon railed at a press conference announcing the indictment.“All these defendants saw were dollar signs,” he fumed, accusing Oum and Choe of “using and abusing our borough’s seniors as pawns in a vast criminal enterprise.” Oum and Choe each face up to 15 years behind bars if convicted of the top count, healthcare fraud in the second degree.
They also face hundreds of counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.McMahon warned there were “countless” other criminals running similar alleged scams.“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.“As far as we can tell, countless other adult daycare centers are engaged in similar criminal activities.”They were just two of the about 100 senior care providers across the city targeted in a sprawling operation Tuesday involving both state, local and federal authorities investigating potential Medicaid fraud.“The New York State Department of Health and the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General joined state and federal l...