Today, Newsday headlined yet another alleged fraud scheme in Long Island, New York where a group of individuals residing in the same Freeport apartment complex were implicated in a federal lawsuit claiming they colluded with a Manhattan law firm and an extensive network of medical providers to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in insurance payouts through false accident claims. This is the same type of system PACT recently documented in our new video about the fraud schemes that raise prices for every American and hurt consumers.
Newsday found:
The unidentified Long Islanders involved in the scheme, the suit contends, were instructed by law firm employees “to fake their injuries and to receive a myriad of health care services that were unnecessary, excessive, unjustified and costly and/or not causally related to the alleged accidents.”
The suit contends Long Islanders were recruited to stage slip and fall accidents, often on cracked or uneven sidewalks in Brooklyn and Queens outside of residential buildings, dating back to 2018. The Long Islanders were sent to the same Manhattan law firm which then directed them to select medical providers who would inflate or falsify their treatment needs to boost a potential lawsuit payout, the suit contends.
In several instances, the victims who allegedly staged accidents received nearly identical treatments and received operative reports from doctors justifying the need for spinal and back surgeries that appear to have been copy and pasted verbatim from dozens of similar cases, the suit contends.
Freeport apartment residents worked alongside a law firm and numerous medical providers to stage these accidents:
The lawsuit names the Liakas law firm in Manhattan and its managing partner Dean Liakas; Total Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, with four Long Island locations; New York Sports and Joints Orthopedic Specialists in Manhattan; Gotham Neurosurgery in Brooklyn; Hudson Regional Hospital in New Jersey; Precision Accelerad, a Manhattan-based radiology firm; Lenox Hill Radiology, with 19 locations in Nassau and Suffolk and Pain Management NYC and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, which each have multiple locations in the five boroughs.
The suit contends that Liakas lawyers direct individuals, commonly known as runners, to recruit individuals to stage accidents at various locations in the five boroughs and to claim a host of injuries from the supposed fall. The runners identified in the suit are all from Freeport or Oceanside.
The Long Islanders who allegedly staged the accidents are told that the amount of money they could receive would increase with surgeries or rehabilitation, and that funding was available if they sought a medical diagnosis and treatment at one or more of the defendant medical firms, the suit states.
Liakas then represented the claimants in personal injury lawsuits against landlords or property owners where the accidents occurred, with cases involving injections or surgeries typically settling for around $2 million, according to the lawsuit.
These collusive staged accidents are commonplace within the broken personal injury system. It’s time for reform. It’s time for a change.