Six current and former New York Police Department employees have been accused of taking part in a medical insurance fraud ring that sent thousands of car accident victims to specific health clinics, doctors and lawyers in exchange for kickbacks, The New York Times reports. Five 911 operators were among those charged in federal court with conspiracy and bribery, based on allegations that they fielded emergency calls and then passed the victims’ information to a fraudulent “call center” in Queens, which would then contact those victims and coax them to visit prearranged medical clinics and lawyers, court documents say. The sixth defendant is a police officer.
The scheme’s alleged ringleader ran the operation from at least 2014 until this month, prosecutors said. Prosecutors estimate that as many as 60,000 car accident victims may have had their confidential information improperly disclosed. The alleged fraud targeted car accident victims from low-income neighborhoods because they were more vulnerable, according to court documents. The ringleader told his fraudulent call center not to target victims in Manhattan, court documents said, because “those people got attorneys.”