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NYPD Officer, Emergency Operators Charged After Allegedly Selling Accident Victim Information

Posted: Thursday, December 19th, 2019 at 10:33 pm

NYPD Officer, Emergency Operators Charged After Allegedly Selling Accident Victim Information

Your confidential information is a valuable commodity that can be used against you if it gets into the wrong hands. A recent case shows how health insurance fraud using your illegally obtained personal data can come from anywhere at any time, even from one of New York’s finest and a group of 911 operators, as a recent case shows.

A New York police officer and five 911 emergency operators were arrested in connection with an alleged 18 million dollar insurance fraud scam targeting unsuspecting car crash victims in Brooklyn. 

Police Officer Yaniris Deleon, and 911 operators Makkah Shabazz, Kortnei Williams, Shakeema Foster, Latifah Abdul-Khaliq and Angela Meyers are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for personal information of hundreds of thousands of people involved in car accidents.

The information they provided was allegedly used to exploit no-fault insurance laws by contacting the accident victims and steering them towards attorneys and medical facilities paying kickbacks for the referrals.

27 Charged Include Police Officer, 911 Operators, Nurses

A total of 27 people were allegedly involved in the scheme, including DeLeon, the 911 operators and nurses who worked to compromise around 60,000 people’s confidential information. Referrals would garner as much as $4,000 per lead, which would include the patient’s contact information.

DeLeon and the group of 911 operators were arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate the travel act, solicitation of bribes and gratuities and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health care information in November 2019. All six of them were subsequently suspended from the New York Police Department.

“The nature of this fraud and bribery results in higher insurance premiums and unnecessary medical costs, which impacts us all,” Westchester County, N.Y., District Attorney Anthony Scarpino said in a statement. “Hopefully, this prosecution will act as a deterrent to those who seek to profit illegally by gaming the system.”

Health Insurance Scam Run Out of Queens Call Center, Targeted Bronx Accident Victims

The scam was allegedly led by Antony Rose, who also went by Todd Chambers. Rose would pay thousands of dollars to the NYPD employees for the private, confidential information. Using a call center in Queens, New York, callers would tell victims they got their number from a non-existent personal injury hotline created to protect them. Some would even be told the callers were somehow associated with the NYPD.

According to court papers, Rose was intent on targeting local community residents in New York’s Bronx neighborhood.

“The hood is number one,” he said. “Tell her all that Manhattan (expletive), those people got attorneys we need all the hood cases. Bronx hood. The top-tier (expletive) is all the hood.”

Court documents revealed that Deleon texted Rose as recently as last summer with a list of “nearly two dozen names and telephone numbers” of victims of area car accidents.

Rose also bribed workers at hospitals and other medical facilities to provide patient information of accident victims, a violation of HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

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