Lawyer ‘Hopeful’ Medicaid Fraud Case Against CB 15 Member Will Be Dismissed

The lawyer for a former Community Board 15 member said he is “hopeful” Medicaid fraud-related charges against his client will be dismissed now that a related case has been thrown out for lack of evidence.

Liliya Kostyuk, a former member of Sheepshead Bay’s Community Board 15, was one of four employees at a Park Slope adult day care center arrested last year for allegedly assisting in a Medicaid scam. Kostyuk was charged with unauthorized practice of a profession for providing social work services without a license. Two other workers were charged with falsifying medical forms.

However, the case against the center’s director, Gelena Deverman, who might have received 25 years in prison on charges of grand larceny, was recently thrown out. A judge in Albany ruled the evidence presented to a grand jury was “legally insufficient,” according to the Daily News.

“We are hopeful that our judge, who is of concurrent jurisdiction to the judge in Albany, will rule in the same way,” said Kostyuk’s lawyer, Albert Dayan.

Dayan said he made an oral application to examine the evidence presented to the grand jury in April, after his client was indicted. He said he filed a written motion at the end of June.

Kostyuk faces up to four years in state prison if found guilty. She is due back in court on October 6, as is her associate Larisa Rumynik, who is accused of falsifying medical forms. The fourth defendant, Valentina Shapran, pleaded guilty and is expected to be sentenced this week, according to the State Attorney General’s office.

The bust was the result of a long-time investigation by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which had been looking into potential abuses at adult day health care centers. The investigation found that employees at the senior center, called the Northern Manor Adult Day Health Care Program, falsified medical admissions forms for a senior citizen so that so that he could qualify for services he was too “healthy” to receive, according to a press release from the Attorney General’s office.

As part of a civil settlement, Northern Manor’s parent company, Northern Manor Multicare Center, agreed to pay $6.5 million and to shut down the Brooklyn center.