Home Care Company’s Chief Is Accused of Grand Larceny

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The president of a Brooklyn-based home health care company was indicted Thursday on charges that his company employed more than 1,000 aides who lacked proper training. The case is the most significant brought by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo in his investigation of the home health care industry, The New York Times reported.

According to prosecutors, the company, which operated as Nursing Personnel Home Care, coordinated with corrupt training programs to certify prospective aides without requiring them to complete required training, then hired them out to Medicaid patients throughout the New York City region, the paper reported.

Both the company and its president, Walter Greenfeld, are charged with first-degree grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing, the paper reported.

Cuomo also filed a civil lawsuit against the company and its shareholders to recover what he said was more than $30 million in improperly billed Medicaid funds, the largest amount his office has tried to recover from any such agency. In addition to Greenfeld, the suit names the principal owner, Isaac Schwartz, and others associated with the company. Both the criminal indictment and the civil lawsuit were filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the paper reported.
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Randy Mastro, a lawyer for the company, sharply disputed Mr. Cuomo’s allegations, saying that all the aides hired by Nursing Personnel had credentials from schools or training programs accredited by state officials. He also dismissed Mr. Cuomo’s claim that the company’s owners had collected $30 million in Medicaid billings, calling it a vastly inflated estimate, the paper reported.

-- NYSSCPA.org News Staff

Posted on 5/5/08

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