Former Southern BK Assemblyman Indicted In $6.3M Narcotics Scheme
On Friday, a former Coney Island pol was indicted for involvement in a scheme pumping $6.3 million in narcotics onto the black market, officials said.
Alec Brook-Krasny, formerly representing Coney Island, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, and Brighton Beach, was charged, along with three healthcare centers and 13 doctors, with a combination of money laundering, health care fraud, and illegally selling oxycodone prescriptions, according to New York Special Narcotics Prosecutor.
Brook-Krasny, the first Russian-American Assemblyman in the legislature, resigned from his elected office in 2015 to take a higher-paying gig in the medical supply industry.
Alec Brook-Kransky’s charges include conspiracy, health care fraud, and scheme to illegally sell prescription drugs.
Dr. Lazar Feygin, the operation’s alleged ringleader, ran his Brooklyn clinics like ‘pill mills’ including Parkville Medical Health in Kensington and LF Medical Services in Clinton Hill.
According to the prosecutors, the clinics would bribe patients with illegal oxycodone prescriptions to submit to unnecessary tests, amounting to millions billed to Medicare and Medicaid providers. In addition, the clinics are accused of money laundering to cover their trail, by paying practitioners through multiple corporations and limited liability ‘shell’ companies.
The clinics received $16 million in fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements from 2013 to 2017, which funded the doctor’s personal real estate holdings, frequent trips overseas, and luxury goods, officials said.
“Hidden within our city were three pill mills disguised as medical clinics, seven drug dealers disguised as medical practitioners and a multi-million dollar scam defrauding NYC’s healthcare fund,” said DEA Special Agent James J. Hunt. “We estimate that these pill mills distributed six million diverted pills, worth $60 to $100 million, into the hands of drug dealers and opioid addicts.”
Officials busted the scheme in a four-year investigation using physical surveillance and a series of Russian-language wiretaps in what has been dubbed “Operation Avalanche”, according to prosecutors. The long-term wiretap investigation involved multiple agencies including the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Prescription Drug Investigation Unit, the DEA, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, and the IRS.