Eight New York city psychotherapists bilked taxpayers for more than $600,000 in sessions with developmentally-delayed kids that they never performed — forging parents’ signatures to get paid while they slacked off and even took vacations, authorities said Thursday.
Lyubov Beylina, Kaderrah Doyle, Cara Steinberg, Marina Golfo, Ego Onaga, Danielle Scopinich, Patricia Hakim and Enock Mensah were accused of stealing more than $600,000 from Medicaid and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene through fraudulent billing practices.
The accused staffers, which include two city Department of Education employees, were supposed to be treating children, ranging from babies to 5-year-olds, under initiatives like the state’s Early Intervention Program.
Instead, they forged the signatures of the parents of roughly 200 vulnerable kids on invoices for treatment they never provided, filed the claims for taxpayer-funded payment with Medicaid and the state health department, and blew off their young patients, prosecutors alleged Thursday in Brooklyn federal court.
One defendant, Lyubov Beylina, billed for 51 EIP therapy sessions between June 28 and July 5, 2016, the same stretch when a Facebook photo shows her lounging on a beach in the Dominican Republic, decked out in a hot-pink bikini and clutching an iguana, officials said.
In addition to Beylina, 30, other therapist swept up in the fraudulent billing scam include Kaderrah Doyle, 41,  Cara Steinberg, 40 and 44-year-old Marina Golfo, 44.
Others charged  Ego Onaga, 45, Danielle Scopinich, 35, Patricia Hakim, 54 and Enock Mensah, 58.
Highlighting the duplicity, William Sweeney, Assistant Director-in-Charge for the FBI, observed: “Rather than provide honest services, they chose to line their own pockets at the expense of taxpayers and the developmentally-delayed children and their families for whom these funds were targeted,” said Sweeney.
The widespread alleged scam, which ran from roughly August 2012 through April 2018, depending on the defendant, was uncovered when workers at the city Health Department discovered several curious claims and tipped off the Department of Investigation.
The probe uncovered thousands of alleged bogus claims filed over the years in the form of “session notes” detailing when and where the treatments took place.
Investigators cross-referenced the claims with data including the suspects’ phone, GPS and air-travel records and realized that the therapists where nowhere near where the appointments supposedly took place, court papers state.
another defendant Patricia Hakim, like Beylina, was allegedly abroad when she filed several claims, taking in the sights in Ireland and Spain.
Doyle’s suspected cover-ups were even more sloppy: In one case, she filed two invoices for two sessions with two kids in two different places at the same time, of which she allegedly attended neither.
Kaderrah Doyle and Ego Onaga, both employees of the Dept Of Education have been reassigned away from kids as the department seeks their removal from the payroll.
Bail for the defendants was set at amounts ranging from $100,000 to $150,000.
The Health Department is reaching out to the families of the roughly 200 kids shorted on their sessions to arrange the treatment they need.