By Michael V. Cusenza
On Thursday, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace announced that a national health care fraud action had netted 11 defendants—including three who call Queens home—variously charged in schemes to defraud Medicare and Medicaid.
On June 26, 2024, Feng Jiang was charged by indictment with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay health care kickbacks, conspiracy to commit money laundering and money laundering in connection with an alleged $24 million scheme involving multiple New York pharmacies. As alleged in the indictment, Jiang, 42, and his co-conspirators paid kickbacks in the form of supermarket gift certificates and cash to Medicare beneficiaries and Medicaid recipients who filled medically unnecessary prescriptions at Elmcare Pharmacy Inc. and NY Elm Pharmacy Inc. in Flushing. The indictment further alleges that Jiang, known as “Jeff” to his Oakland Gardens neighbors, and others wrote checks to various “trading companies” to obtain cash that was distributed as profits amongst the pharmacies’ owners and used to pay illegal kickbacks and bribes.
Forest Hills resident Albert Muratov pleaded guilty on June 11, 2024 to health care fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud Medicare by billing for undispensed cancer medication. Muratov, 46, who operated Ave M Pharmacy in Brooklyn, along with Artom Rafaelov and others, handled the pharmacy’s finances and payments and, together with others, caused the submission of approximately 253 claims to Medicare for Targretin Gel 1 percent. Targretin is a prescription drug used to treat skin conditions caused by Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma, a rare skin cancer. The average wholesale price for a 60-gram tube of Targretin Gel 1 percent was over $34,000. From 2017 to 2021, the defendant and his co-conspirators, including Rafaelov, billed Medicare for Targretin that was medically unnecessary, not ordered by a professional, or that they did not dispense; as a result, Medicare paid Ave M Pharmacy more than $4 million.
Artom Rafaelov pleaded guilty on September 28, 2022 to a criminal information charging him with health care fraud. Rafaelov, 41, owned and operated Ave M Pharmacy in Brooklyn. Between approximately February 2017 and September 2021, the Fresh Meadows resident and co-conspirator Albert Muratov defrauded Medicare by causing Ave M to submit fraudulent claims for Targretin Gel 1 percent (described above) that were neither purchased nor stocked by Ave M; and not medically necessary or not prescribed by the doctors that Ave M claimed had prescribed the medication. In March 2024, Rafaelov was sentenced by United States District Judge William F. Kuntz II to 37 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution to Medicare.
“These defendants have been charged with treating the Medicare and Medicaid programs like cash registers they could use to ring up withdrawals from the public treasury straight into their pockets,” Peace said.
“Health care fraud affects every American,” added Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri. “It siphons off hard-earned tax dollars meant to provide care for the vulnerable and disabled. In doing so, it also raises the cost of care for all patients. Even worse, as the prosecutions we announce today underscore, health care fraud can harm patients and fuel addiction.”
