Suffolk Taxi Owner Gets 97 Months for $19M Medicaid Fraud

A Mount Sinai man was sentenced Wednesday to 97 months in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme that drained more than $19 million from the Medicaid program through fictitious medical transportation claims.

Adnan "Eddie" Arshad, 47, owned MTK Taxi LLC in Montauk and co-owned All-Star Taxi LLC in Ronkonkoma, running vehicles primarily out of Shirley in Suffolk County. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella's office said the fraud ran from approximately December 2020 until Arshad's arrest in June 2024.

Prosecutors said Arshad and his co-conspirators paid illegal kickbacks to Medicaid beneficiaries who agreed to request transportation through his companies — nominally for trips to addiction treatment centers. In practice, the companies rarely provided those rides. Instead, they submitted fraudulent billing for nonexistent trips, including claims tied to people who had already died, were hospitalized, or were incarcerated at the time the purported rides occurred.

To inflate reimbursement amounts, Arshad's operation steered beneficiaries toward addiction treatment centers in New York City rather than facilities available locally on Long Island, and instructed riders to give false pickup addresses to make trips appear longer, prosecutors said. The companies billed Medicaid more than $16 million for trips to three city treatment centers alone.

Arshad used the proceeds to buy additional vehicles, multimillion-dollar homes, and luxury cars including a Ferrari, multiple BMWs, and Mercedes vehicles, according to prosecutors.

At least five co-conspirators have pleaded guilty and are awaiting their own sentencing.

"Today's sentence sends a clear message that those who defraud public healthcare programs for personal enrichment should take notice of the price this defendant will now pay," Nocella said.

HHS-OIG Special Agent-in-Charge Naomi Gruchacz said Arshad had "brazenly defrauded the Medicaid program of tens of millions of dollars for transportation services that were never provided."

The case was investigated with assistance from the New York State Comptroller's Office and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the New York State Attorney General's Office.