Former LI Businessman Pocketed $12 Million In Medicare Scheme: Feds

BROOKLYN, NY — A former businessman from Plainview was charged on Tuesday with conspiring to commit health care fraud, violating the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, conspiring to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute and money laundering, federal prosecutors said.

Oleg Beretsky, 67, now of Florida, was arrested on Wednesday. He'll be arraigned in the Eastern District of New York at a later date.

Doctors and providers who participated in Beretsky’s scheme billed more than $22 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare. Of that more than $22 million, Medicare paid more than $12.4 million in claims, which was distributed to Beretsky and his co-conspirators. U.S. Attorney John Durham said.

“As alleged, elderly individuals trusted the defendant to help them with their health care decisions. Rather than look out for the interests of some of the most vulnerable members of our community, he sold access to those who trusted him to the highest bidder,” Durham said. “The defendant compounded his crimes by encouraging doctors and health care providers who became part of his scheme to cheat Medicare by billing for work that was not needed or never performed."

As alleged in court filings, from January 2017 to April 2024, Beretsky and co-conspirators engaged in a health care fraud, kickback and money laundering scheme. Beretsky was the owner of Obest, Inc., a company in Plainview, New York, that purported to provide health care professionals with billing, consulting and support services, prosecutors said.

In reality, Obest’s principal business consisted of referring elderly Medicare patients to doctors and other health care professionals in exchange for kickbacks and bribes, Durham said.

Beretsky ran Obest through at least 2022.

Many of the patients were immigrants from the former Soviet Union, prosecutors said.

Beretsky used control to ensure that only doctors and other providers—including social workers, and pain specialists—who were willing to pay him would have access to the patients, prosecutors allege.

On at least one occasion, Beretsky threatened a patient who wanted to continue seeinga provider who had stopped paying illegal kickbacks to the defendant, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

“The defendant and his co-conspirators are accused of pocketing more than $12 million while exploiting the unknowing, innocent public, including victims from immigrant communities,” said Homeland Security Investigations New York Special Agent in Charge Alfonso.