An Indian national pleaded guilty today to a $227 million Medicare fraud scheme in which hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries’ personally identifiable information was purchased from a company based in Pakistan and used to bill Medicare for COVID-19 test kits that were never provided.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Syed Murtuza Kablazada, 36, an Indian national residing in Des Plaines, Illinois, engaged in a scheme to defraud the Medicare program by submitting false and fraudulent claims for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits that were not requested by beneficiaries or provided to them. Over the course of six months, starting in January 2023, Kablazada and his co-schemers acquired three Chicago-area laboratories, Chicago Care, V Care, and Al-Ameer. Kablazada then paid approximately $11 million to a purported telemarketing company based in…
Never click on links in SMS messages or emails that claim your account has been “suspended” or that you have a “pending package,” as these are classic entry points for credential-harvesting malware.