Medical assistant gets 3 years for role in $17M southern Brooklyn Medicare fraud
A Brooklyn federal judge called health care schemes a “thorny problem” in the Eastern District of New York before sentencing a medical assistant to three years in prison for his role in a $17 million Medicaid and Medicare scam in southern Brooklyn.
Yuriy Omelchenko previously pleaded guilty to working at as an unlicensed physical and occupational therapist, supervising aides as they gave unnecessary “treatments,” to patients at two Brooklyn clinics for Medicaid kickbacks.
Sets of rolling indictments from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office find continuous acts of health care fraud in Brooklyn. Because of this and Omelchenko’s hands-on role in the scheme, Judge Roslynn Mauskopf found prison time necessary for the crime she referred to as “endemic” in certain cultures.