Acting Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor (OIFP) announced that the owner of a chain of mental health clinics in New Jersey was charged with enlisting the aid of his employees to defraud Medicaid in a phony billing scheme and then, together with his wife, using the clinics to conceal the couple’s income in a $1 million tax evasion scheme. Daniel E. Cassell, 56, of Perkasie, PA, founder of Kwenyan Professional Health Services, LLC and Kwenyan and Associates (the “Kwenyan Entities”) was charged with first-degree money laundering, second-degree theft by deception, and multiple counts of conspiracy, insurance fraud, and related offenses in an indictment handed up by a state grand jury on August 25, 2022.
The charges stem from a 2019 OIFP investigation allegedly revealing that from January 2015 through October 2021, when the Kwenyan entities ceased operations, Cassell, with assistance from his employees, engaged in schemes to defraud Medicaid and to defraud Progressive Insurance Company, which provided auto insurance coverage for a fleet of over 20 service vans used by the clinics. A subsequent joint investigation by OIFP and the New Jersey Department of the Treasury allegedly revealed that Cassell and his wife, Bindu R. Cassell, 37, of Perkasie, PA, used the Kwenyan entities to hide income and also failed to disclose additional earned income on their jointly filed 2016, 2017 and 2018 NJ tax returns.
Cassell is accused of conspiring with and directing Kwenyan employees Carmen C. Ward, 63 of Flemington NJ, and Knyckholle Hooke, 47, of Roselle, NJ, in a Medicaid fraud scheme in which thousands of false claims were submitted to Medicaid for reimbursement of mental health services that were never rendered, or where group services were performed but individual or family psychotherapy services were billed. The three were charged in the indictment with second-degree conspiracy to commit healthcare claims fraud, second-degree healthcare claims fraud, third-degree conspiracy to commit Medicaid Fraud, and third-degree Medicaid Fraud.
