Brooklyn medical supply co. owner, staff nabbed for $3.2M Medicaid fraud
Nkem Udeh, the owner of Advance Medical Supply Inc. in Crown Heights; her brother and store manager Humphrey Udeh; two of her employees, Keva Johnson and Yolane Fouche; and the store itself have been accused by the state Attorney General’s Office of fraudulently billing Medicaid over $1.7 million and billing HealthFirst, a health insurer for Medicaid recipients, for another $1.5 million.
The company and its employees billed the state Medicaid program, both directly and through managed care, for nearly a million units of a highly-specialized and expensive liquid pediatric nutritional formula for kids that they claimed the dispensed.
In fact, according to the state Attorney General’s Office, the company did not dispense the expensive formula. Instead, it reportedly dispensed over-the-counter nutritional supplement formulas, such as Pediasure. The defendants face up to 25 years in prison on grand larceny charges.
“The defendants’ formula for fraud was to file inflated claims for medicine designed to help needy children with rare illnesses. The scam drained millions of taxpayer dollars, money the defendants turned around and used for their own personal benefit,” NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said.