Attorney General Letitia James announced the indictment and arrest of the owner of Purple Heart Transportation (“Purple Heart”), Sean Ally, 44, as well as the indictment and arrest of a driver of the company, Lissette Joza, 31, for stealing over $1 million from the New York Medicaid program for billing fake transportation services that were never provided. Ally and Joza were arrested September 13 upon their arrival at JFK airport from Guyana. Both defendants as well as a third indicted defendant, Shamiza Ally, fled the United States some months earlier. Shamiza Ally, the third indicted defendant, remains at large abroad. Prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) outlined in court a scheme whereby the defendants, together using a number of different techniques, billed Medicaid for transportation services that never occurred. Between late September 2017 and early May 2019, Purple Heart submitted claims to and collected from Medicaid over $29 million for allegedly providing transportation services to Medicaid patients in and around New York City. However, prosecutors found and allege that over $19 million dollars of that amount was for unmatched services — services for which there no corresponding bill for medical treatment for the patients who purportedly received the transportation services. Prosecutors also assert that the defendants allegedly paid numerous Medicaid patients a weekly kickback to use their Medicaid identification numbers so that they could then bill for non-existent transportation services in the name of these patients.
