Fraud
Insurance Fraud
A gang of Russian crooks ran a record-setting, $279 million fraud that exploited New York’s “no-fault” auto –accident law, authorities said 2/29/12. The gang worked with corrupt doctors to set up more than 100 phony medical clinics across the city. There, they generated fake bills for the treatment of “injuries” that “ranged from wild exaggerations to outright fabrications,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said. The fraudsters took advantage of the “patient-friendly provisions” of New York’s mandatory “no-fault” insurance coverage, which guarantees up to $50,000 in medical benefits for anyone hurt in a car crash. Police commissioner Ray Kelly sent two undercover cops infiltrated the operation about six months ago by posing as crash victims. Kelly “coached” the undercover cops to complain about neck, back and leg pain, and were then “kept running back and forth for treatments and tests that was as close as possible to the $50,000 for each officer.” The Russian gang was convicted; the various defendants face prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years. In Waterloo, New York- A man admitted that he crushed his son under a truck in a life insurance scheme that netted him $700,000. The man (Karl Karlsen’s) plea of guilty to second-degree murder in upstate New York came a day before his trial was set to open. Karlsen’s, 53, was charged with murder and insurance fraud because he crushed his son (Levy) to death in 2008 by shifting a truck off its jacks as the son worked underneath it. Karlsen’s former wife, Christina Ann Karlsen, died New Year’s Day in 1991 in a fire at her home. He denied that he was the cause of her death and collected $200,000 in insurance on his wife after the fire declared an accident. After his wife’s death, they moved to Manhattan. His second wife, Cindy Karlsen, testifies during a pretrial hearing that she began to suspect in the summer of 2011 that her husband had killed his son. She said she had learned that he had used to
A gang of Russian crooks ran a record-setting, $279 million fraud that exploited New York’s “no-fault” auto –accident law, authorities said 2/29/12. The gang worked with corrupt doctors to set up more than 100 phony medical clinics across the city. There, they generated fake bills for the treatment of “injuries” that “ranged from wild exaggerations to outright fabrications,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said. The fraudsters took advantage of the “patient-friendly provisions” of New York’s mandatory “no-fault” insurance coverage, which guarantees up to $50,000 in medical benefits for anyone hurt in a car crash. Police commissioner Ray Kelly sent two undercover cops infiltrated the operation about six months ago by posing as crash victims. Kelly “coached” the undercover cops to complain about neck, back and leg pain, and were then “kept running back and forth for treatments and tests that was as close as possible to the $50,000 for each officer.” The Russian gang was convicted; the various defendants face prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years. In Waterloo, New York- A man admitted that he crushed his son under a truck in a life insurance scheme that netted him $700,000. The man (Karl Karlsen’s) plea of guilty to second-degree murder in upstate New York came a day before his trial was set to open. Karlsen’s, 53, was charged with murder and insurance fraud because he crushed his son (Levy) to death in 2008 by shifting a truck off its jacks as the son worked underneath it. Karlsen’s former wife, Christina Ann Karlsen, died New Year’s Day in 1991 in a fire at her home. He denied that he was the cause of her death and collected $200,000 in insurance on his wife after the fire declared an accident. After his wife’s death, they moved to Manhattan. His second wife, Cindy Karlsen, testifies during a pretrial hearing that she began to suspect in the summer of 2011 that her husband had killed his son. She said she had learned that he had used to