Security News > 2022 > November > US charges BEC suspects with targeting federal health care programs
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged ten defendants for their alleged involvement in business email compromise schemes targeting numerous victims across the country, including U.S. federal funding programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
"Unwittingly, five state Medicaid programs, two Medicare Administrative Contractors, and two private health insurers allegedly were deceived into making payments to the defendants and their co-conspirators instead of depositing the reimbursement payments into bank accounts belonging to the hospitals," DOJ said in a press release on Friday.
"The defendants and their co-conspirators allegedly laundered the proceeds fraudulently obtained from these health care benefit plans and from other victims by, among other things, withdrawing large amounts of cash, layering them through other accounts they or their co-conspirators opened in the names of false and stolen identities and shell companies, transferring them overseas, and purchasing luxury goods and exotic automobiles."
Their schemes allegedly caused more than $4.7 million in losses to Medicare, Medicaid, and U.S. private health insurers and over $6.4 million in losses to U.S. federal government agencies, private companies, and individuals.
"Millions of American citizens rely on Medicaid, Medicare, and other health care systems for their health care needs," Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division added today.
"These subjects utilized complex financial schemes, such as BECs and money laundering, to defraud and undermine health care systems across the United States."