{"id":283596,"date":"2026-07-01T14:27:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/283596\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T14:27:45","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:27:45","slug":"state-sanctioned-russian-crime-ring-ran-a-billion-dollar-medicare-scam-out-of-brooklyn-and-stole-1-million-patients-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/283596\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018State-Sanctioned\u2019 Russian Crime Ring Ran a Billion-Dollar Medicare Scam Out of Brooklyn \u2014 and Stole 1 Million Patients\u2019 Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Russia-based criminal syndicate ran one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history out of a storefront in Brooklyn, billing the program more than $10.6 billion and collecting roughly $941 million before federal agents unraveled it, the New York Post<\/a> reports. Prosecutors have named the case \u201cOperation Gold Rush.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a superseding indictment unsealed June 23, the operation began in 2022, when the group quietly bought up more than 30 U.S. medical-supply companies that were already enrolled in Medicare \u2014 businesses scattered across California, Texas, Chicago and Kentucky. To run them on paper, the syndicate recruited young men, primarily from Russia and Estonia, and installed them as straw owners. Twelve people have now been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, health care fraud and money laundering: nationals of Russia, Czechia and Estonia, along with a single U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n

One of the New York hubs was G&I Ortho Supply on Avenue X in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. From those shell companies, prosecutors say, the gang blanket-billed Medicare almost entirely for urinary catheters, using the stolen credentials of some 7,000 physicians and more than 1 million Medicare recipients. The numbers strained belief: one supplier alone billed over $250 million for catheters in 2023 \u2014 about $50 million more than every other provider in the country spent on catheters combined, in a year when the entire United States used roughly $200 million worth.<\/p>\n

Federal investigators have not identified which Russian organization was behind the fraud, and the indictment is thin on who was directing it from abroad. Criminologists who study Russian organized crime told the Post the sheer scale points higher up. \u201cThese are big numbers. I don\u2019t see how you become a John Gotti in Russia without the government either giving you permission or controlling what you do,\u201d said Jay Albanese, a criminology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Serguei Cheloukhine, a John Jay College professor and former Interpol officer, went further: \u201cAt the very top of the network are the [Russian] politicians and law enforcement. They are protecting the network.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money moved through accounts in China, Israel, Pakistan, Singapore, Turkey and Hong Kong. The June 23 announcement drew a wall of federal officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz. In April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued 1.3 million recipients new ID numbers over the breach. Among the beneficiaries billed by the ring were 67 people who were already dead, and the scheme generated more than 400,000 complaints.<\/p>\n

All 12 defendants are now wanted; prosecutors say the gang directed its U.S.-based members to flee across the Mexican border as arrests began. One straw owner who did not get away, 26-year-old Estonian national Aleksandr Lis, pleaded guilty last year, was sentenced to 28 months and was deported. For the ordinary Americans caught in the fraud, the frustration was that it ran for so long. \u201cMedicare was aware of it,\u201d said Pamela Ludwig, a Nashville boutique owner whose business name was cloned by the scammers, \u201cso why the heck were they still paying these claims?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Russia-based criminal syndicate ran one of the largest Medicare frauds in American history out of a storefront…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-283596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283596","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=283596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}