Brooklyn Adult Day Care and Home Care Business Charged in $68 Million Medicaid scheme
A promotional photo from Happy Family’s website shows the smiling founder of the adult daycare center. The feds have charged Khan and seven others in a $68 million fraud scheme.
Brooklyn residents Zakia Khan, 53; Ahsan Ijaz, 27; Elaine Antao, 45; Omneah Hamdi, 61; Manal Wasef, 44; Ansir Abassi, 38; Amran Hashmi, 53, and Seema Memon, 30, were indicted on charges of healthcare fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and paying kickbacks, according to a DOJ press release.
The scheme surrounded Khan and Ijaz, who owned two Brooklyn-based social adult day care centers, Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc. or “Family Social” and Happy Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc. or “Happy Family,” according to the press release. They also owned another company in Brooklyn called Responsible Care Staffing Inc., a financial intermediary for the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Services Program (CDPAP) that allowed family members of Medicaid recipients to get paid for helping them with their daily life activities. This was a managed long-term care (MLTC) program offered by New York’s Medicaid program.
Antao, Hamdi and Abassi all owned their own businesses and either worked for or were partnered with Khan, according to the indictment. Wasef, Hashmi, and Memon were all Khan’s employees.
Between October 2017 and July 2024, the defendants allegedly participated in a scheme to pay kickbacks and bribes to Medicaid recipients to get them to join the SADC or CDPAP services offered at Happy Family or Family Social, according to the indictment. They would also pay kickbacks to recruiters who referred Medicaid recipients to these MLTC plans at one of Khan and Ijaz’s companies.
Prosecutors also allege that the defendants submitted claims to Medicaid through the MLTC program that were either medically unnecessary or not provided at all. An investigation found that most of the Medicaid recipients enrolled for services at Happy Family or Family Social were allegedly paid illegal incentives and did not visit the companies or receive CDPAP services that Responsible Care supposedly organized and billed to Medicaid. Responsible Care allegedly even billed the Medicaid program for services on dates when the purported Medicaid recipients were reportedly out of the U.S.
Khan, Hashmi, and Abassi allegedly managed the scheme to pay marketers and recruiters for Happy Family, Family Social, and Responsible Care, with Hashmi and Abassi recruiting and paying kickbacks to Medicare recipients they recruited, according to the indictment. Some marketers even allegedly pretended to be caregivers or family members of Medicaid recipients to get the person into the MTLC plan of the Medicaid program.
Antao, Hamdi and Wasef allegedly referred Medicaid recipients to the three companies and created fake sign-in sheets to show that the patients received services when they did not, according to the indictment. Khan, Abassi, Hashmi and Memon also allegedly paid monthly payments from May 2023 to July 2024, ranging between $500 and $1,500, to a Medicaid recipient who permitted them to bill Medicaid for CDPAP services the recipient never received.
The multi-year scheme defrauded the New York Medicaid program out of $68 million for services they either allegedly did not provide or were the product of paid kickbacks, according to the indictment. Each defendant faces five to 20 years in prison per count if convicted, according to the DOJ press release.
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