Multiple Indian-Americans charged with dental practice fraud
Darpan News Desk IANS, 27 Jan, 2023 12:05 PM
New York, Jan 27 (IANS) Eight Indian-Americans are among 12 dental practice owners and co-conspirators who have been charged for allegedly engaging in a multifaceted racketeering conspiracy through a multi-state network of dental practices in the US state of Pennsylvania.
The defendants were allegedly part of a wide-ranging scheme to defraud Medicaid, US Immigration authorities, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and to launder the fraud proceeds, a Department of Justice (DOJ) release said on Thursday.
The individuals were charged with operating and participating in a series of dental practices and related companies (the Savani Group) that engaged in visa fraud, health care fraud, wire fraud involving federal tax evasion, and money laundering.
Dentist brothers Bhaskar Savani, 57, and Niranjan Savani, 51, owned and controlled the Savani Group dental practices.
The third brother, Arun Savani, 55, owned and managed the Savani Group companies and was responsible for the Group's financial affairs.
The trio allegedly conspired to recruit foreign workers for US work visas while concealing the workers' true job titles and responsibilities.
Sunil Philip, 57, who was an outside accountant for the Savani Group, allegedly engaged in a wire fraud scheme to evade federal taxes along with the three brothers.
The Savani brothers, along with two other employees of Savani Group, allegedly executed a scheme to use nominee owners of "on paper" dental practices to obtain and continue to profit from Medicaid contracts after managed care companies terminated the Savani Group dental practices' Pennsylvania Medicaid contracts.
They also allegedly conspired to place adulterated and misbranded dental devices in US commerce, according to the DOJ.
Vivek Savani, 35, Bharatkumar Parasana, 55, and Hiteshkumar Goyani, 39, and Piyusha Patel, 41, were employed under the H1-B visa program under the pretense of serving in specialty occupations for the Savani Group but actually performed office support roles for the Group's dental practices.
Bhaskar, Arun, Niranjan and Sunil Philip made their initial court appearances on January 20 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The person tested positive for the avian influenza A (H5) virus and was involved in the culling of poultry presumed to have had H5N1 bird flu, Xinhua news agency quoted the CDC as saying on Thursday.
US Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for Covid-19 on undergoing rapid and PCR tests, her spokesperson said. Harris, 57, has not been a close contact to US President Joe Biden or the first lady "due to their respective recent travel schedules," the statement said.
"Twitter's become very boring. They've gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices," he said. Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat following the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
The Chaoyang district reported 26 cases over the weekend, the highest number so far in Beijing's latest surge, said the BBC report. All 3.5 million residents in Chaoyang, Beijing's most populous district, will undergo three rounds of mass testing, according to a notice by the city's disease prevention team.
He was in the final year of high school and had been set to study criminal justice at a local university. On Friday evening, the temperatures were down to about 12 degrees Celsius in New Milford, which is about 35 km from New York City.
Pavan Swarna (23) of Khammam and his friend Vamshi Krishna Pechetty (23) of Bachupally in Medchal Malkajgiri district were killed in a head-on collision of two cars in Illinois on April 21.
