A lawyer, a doctor and two chiropractors, are among 12 people charged with participating in a many layered insurance fraud scheme in the US that recruited accident victims as clients.
Acting Attorney General John Hoffman announced a 45-count indictment charging the 12 with racketeering, conspiracy and many other charges.
llegal 'runners' obtained traffic accident reports from police stations and visited victims' homes to persuade them to use chiropractic facilities owned by two brothers, 50-year-old Anhuar Bandy and 53-year-old Karim Bandy, said acting Attorney General John Hoffman.
Hoffman says those patients were then sent to a doctor and a lawyer who made illegal payments to the brothers, whom Hoffman described as the 'ringleaders, for the referrals.
The alleged offences and charges have taken place less than 10 years after Anhaur Bandy's conviction on insurance fraud and criminal racketeering charges, for which he served four years in state prison and is currently on parole. The latest scam used "runners" to recruit motor-vehicle accident victims to help generate millions of dollars in overstated medical and legal bills.
Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman said: "Today's charges reveal a massive criminal trifecta as the tentacles of the fraud reached into the medical system, the legal system, and the insurance system with these defendants ultimately extracting millions of dollars for themselves."
Those involved in motor vehicle accidents have enough to deal with without "worrying about becoming pawns in an illicit and egregious scheme aimed at generating millions of dollars in illegal and ill gotten profits," he said.
Insurance companies were billed millions of dollars for the services, said Hoffman.
