Julio Alvarado, 63, of Yonkers, New York, was sentenced to 95 months in prison for leading a sprawling scheme to defraud Medicaid of millions of dollars through the billing of fraudulent transportation claims. Alvarado previously pleaded guilty to one count of healthcare fraud. From August 2017 to February 2020, KJ Transportation C Services Inc. (“KJ”) was paid more than $20 million for providing transportation services for Medicaid enrollees in the New York City area. A large volume of those claims were fraudulent. In some instances, the Medicaid recipient was deceased or out of the country when KJ claimed it was transporting that person to medical appointments. In other instances, the company used stolen identities, whereby the Medicaid recipient had never heard of KJ and had never taken any rides with the company. In other instances, the Medicaid recipients had received unlawful kickbacks from defendants in exchange for either providing KJ their Medicaid information or for fraudulently scheduling trips they did not take. Alvarado, who supervised more than a dozen other participants in the scheme, was responsible for billing more than $8 million in fraudulent trip claims. In addition to the prison term, Alvarado was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $8,507,115 in restitution and to forfeit $8,507,115.
