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QUEENS---The indictment of eight people and one law firm for their roles in a criminal enterprise that submitted phony personal injury claims to insurance carriers has been announced by the state attorney general's office and Howard Mills, state insurance superintendent.
The defendants include two medical doctors, a personal injury attorney and his law firm, and the owners of three Queens medical clinics.
The defendants are charged with enterprise corruption, a class B felony which carries a maximum sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison. Other charges brought include scheme to defraud, money laundering, grand larceny, insurance fraud, falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing.
The Attorney General's office has instituted a civil enforcement action against the defendants seeking the forfeiture of over $2.2 million in illegally obtained proceeds. Pursuant to this action, the Attorney General obtained a court order freezing assets - including bank account proceeds and real property --of the defendants.
The indictment alleges that the defendants submitted fraudulent no-fault and bodily injury claims to insurance carriers. The no-fault law governs the provision of medical care to people injured in car accidents. An injured accident victim may also pursue a separate bodily injury claim - including damages for pain and suffering - if he or she has suffered a serious injury as a result of the accident.
According to the indictment, defendants Yury Baumblit, Rimma Baumblit, and Alex Goferman secretly owned three medical clinics in Queens, East Elm Medical P.C. in East Elmhurst, Balance for Life Medical Diagnostic P.C. in Forest Hills, and Queens County Medical P.C. in Corona. Defendant-doctor Zhanna Kanevsky was an owner on paper of East Elm Medical and Balance for Life Medical Diagnostic, and defendant-doctor Dan Lewis was an owner on paper of Queens County Medical. In reality, the doctors did not own or control the clinics. Defendants Yuri Baumblit, Rimma Baumblit, and Alex Goferman, who have no medical training, determined what medical and health services were to be provided to clinic patients.
The medical clinics were supplied with patients by "steerers," including defendants Claudia Chacon and Kevin Muniz. The steerers solicited motor vehicle accident victims and instructed them to exaggerate and fabricate injuries. Chacon and a crew of steerers used police scanners to intercept radio transmissions of car accidents in Queens. Chacon and her subordinates raced to the scene and solicited the accident victims to attend the medical clinics. The clinic owners paid the steerers a fixed fee for each referral.
The indictment alleges that following the referrals to the medical clinics, doctors Kanevsky and Lewis conducted cursory medical evaluations of the patients and fraudulently referred them for unnecessary treatment and tests. Without regard to medical need, patients received months of rehabilitative care designed to treat soft tissue injuries, including physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic care, expensive diagnostic testing (including multiple MRIs and kidney sonograms) and durable medical equipment. In order to justify the months of treatment and testing to the insurance carriers, defendants Kanvesky and Lewis generated false treatment reports containing fabricated symptoms and diagnoses.
It is also alleged that Baumblit, Baumblit and Goferman routinely referred accident victims to defendant-attorney Albert Rudgayzer and his Brooklyn law firm, defendant Rudgayzer & Gratt, LLP, in order to obtain money from the insurance carriers through fraudulent bodily injury claims. The medical clinics provided months of unnecessary treatment to the accident victims, in part, to fraudulently support the bodily injury claims in lawsuits pursued by Rudgayzer. Rudgayzer illegally paid the clinic owners a per claim fee for the referral of clients and also shared with the clinics a portion of the proceeds from the settlements of the bodily injury claims.
The 72 counts of the indictment charge enterprise corruption, a B felony; money laundering in the second degree, a C felony; money laundering in the third degree, a D felony; grand larceny in the third degree, a D felony; insurance fraud in the third degree, a D felony; scheme to defraud in the first degree, an E felony; falsifying business records in the first degree, an E felony; offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree, an E felony, money laundering in the fourth degree, an E felony; and grand larceny in the fourth degree, an E felony.
The defendants named in the indictment are:
Yury Baumblit, 55, of Brooklyn, a secret owner and manager of the medical clinics.
Rimma Baumblit, 49, of Brooklyn, a secret owner of the medical clinics, and owner of a billing service used to submit fraudulent claims.
Alex Goferman, 46, of Brooklyn, a secret owner and manager of the medical clinics.
Zhanna Kanevsky, 44, of Staten Island; a medical doctor and paper owner of Balance for Life Medical Diagnostic, PC and East Elm Medical PC.
Dan Lewis, 54, of Mamaroneck, a medical doctor and paper owner of Queens County Medical PC.
Claudia Chacon, 30, of East Elmhurst, clinic manager and steerer.
Kevin Muniz, 27, of Corona, steerer.
Albert Rudgayzer, 34, of Hewlett, attorney
Rudgayzer & Gratt, LLP, located in Brooklyn, a law firm.
The prosecutions stem from a two-year investigation conducted by Attorney General's Auto Insurance Fraud Unit. The investigation included the use of court-authorized wiretaps and included investigators from the State Insurance Department's Insurance Frauds Bureau. 11-29-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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