A close associate of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on insurance fraud charges, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
Zhan Petrosyants was accused of obtaining millions of dollars from no-fault auto insurance claims from 2018 to 2023, said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton. In the indictment, Petrosyants’ scheme involved submitting tens of millions in phony medical claims, and then laundering the ill-gotten gains.<\/p>\n
In order to carry out the alleged scheme and prepare the fraudulent bills, Petrosyants and co-conspirators used the license information and signatures from licensed psychologists and other medical professionals on the fake billing records submitted to insurance companies for payment.<\/p>\n
The money paid to Petrosyants and the others was sent to two shell corporations, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office, neither of which provided medical services or were run by a medical professional. Nearly all the money the shell companies received was later transferred to a bank account help by a jewelry business in Manhattan’s Diamond District, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old Petrosyants was taken into custody by the FBI Tuesday night and was set to appear before a judge on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Petrosyants orchestrated a complex scheme to cheat insurance providers out of millions of dollars,\u201d Clayton said. “No-fault insurance fraud schemes raise costs for everyone and reduce benefits to consumers, an unnecessary burden we all unfortunately share.”<\/p>\n
Petrosyants was charged with conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering. Attorneys for Petrosyants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
If convicted of all the charges, Petrosyants would face up to 60 years in prison.<\/p>\n
Petrosyants was among the former mayor\u2019s closest associates during his administration. Adams frequented restaurants run by Petrosyants, and the duo have been seen and photographed at several events together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A close associate of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on insurance fraud charges,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[81,9,11,10,87],"class_list":{"0":"post-183229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-eric-adams","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}