Noman Ahmed, Adnan Arshad, Rehman Diwan, Jessica Hendrickson, Jose Marte, Mohammed Saleem, Faisal Shamsi, and Waqas Shamsi were charged with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay healthcare kickbacks, paying healthcare kickbacks, and money laundering. The defendants allegedly offered and paid healthcare kickbacks and submitted fraudulent claims to Medicaid for ambulette services to medical appointments that were not performed, or the costs were artificially inflated. As set forth in court filings, the defendants owned, operated and were employees of several transportation companies. From approximately December 2020 to the present, the defendants paid illegal healthcare kickbacks to Medicaid beneficiaries so that those beneficiaries would order medical transportation services specifically from the defendants, which generally included transportation to addiction treatment centers for the beneficiaries’ purportedly necessary methadone treatment.
The defendants generally did not provide the medical transportation services ordered by the Medicaid beneficiaries. Yet in total, the defendants and their transportation companies fraudulently billed Medicaid millions of dollars for these services throughout the course of the scheme. At least two claims were submitted to Medicaid for individuals who were deceased, and some claims were submitted for individuals who were hospitalized or incarcerated. The defendants also submitted artificially inflated claims to Medicaid. Although there were numerous addiction treatment centers on Long Island the beneficiaries could have utilized, the defendants instructed them to order rides to addiction treatment centers in New York City and to list false addresses so they could obtain higher reimbursement rates from Medicaid for longer rides. The transportation companies owned or operated by the defendants billed Medicaid over $16 million for trips to just three addiction treatment centers in New York City. The defendants Adnan Arshad and Mohammed Saleem used the illicit proceeds of the schemes to purchase approximately 15 additional transport vehicles for use in the scheme and to purchase multimillion-dollar homes and luxury vehicles.
