One week after the US authorities had issued a wanted bulletin for Shamiza Ali, also called Shamiza Bacchus, a Guyanese who has been indicted in a multimillion-dollar Medicaid fraud in New York, she was arrested on Monday evening at the John F Kennedy International Airport.
The woman was taken into custody by law enforcement moments after stepping off a flight from Guyana. The Guyanese woman and two others were indicted for falsifying information and ripping off the medical scheme of close to US$20 million.
It was reported that the woman, along with her co-accused, fled to Guyana when an investigation was launched into the matter.
It was alleged that between September 2017 and May 2019, Purpleheart Transportation Service submitted claims to and collected from Medicaid over US$29 million for allegedly providing transportation services to Medicaid patients in and around New York City.
However, Prosecutors found and allege that over US$19 million of that amount was for unmatched services — services for which there was no corresponding bill for medical treatment for the patients who purportedly received the transportation services.
In court documents, the New York Prosecutors outlined a scheme whereby the defendants, together using a number of different techniques, billed Medicaid for transportation services that never occurred under their company, “Purpleheart Transportation Service”.
Medicaid reimburses transportation providers for transporting Medicaid patients to and from covered medical services.
