Shawdesh Desk:

A pair of Brooklyn-based businesses ripped off the state’s controversial Medicaid homecare program to the tune of $68 million, federal prosecutors alleged this week.

The eight accused scammers — including the owners of the two adult day care facilities — allegedly mounted the yearslong kickback and bribery scheme to defraud the state program, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday. The allegedly fraud-ridden Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) allows New Yorkers with minimal experience to get paid to take care of loved ones at home. Hundreds of “middleman” firms essentially work as payroll agents between the caregivers and Medicaid, with minimal oversight.

Zakia Khan and Ahsan Ijaz, the owners of Happy Family Social Adult Day Care and Family Social Adult Day Care, also ran one such fiscal intermediary, Responsible Care Staffing, which was allegedly used to process payments for bogus services, according to the feds.

Five other people – Elaine Antao, Omneah Hamdi, and Manal Wasef, Ansir Abassi and Amran Hashmi– were also charged for their involvement in the alleged scheme.

All of the defendants face charges of fraud and conspiring to collect kickbacks. Khan also faces additional money laundering charges.

Each could be sentenced to decades in prison, if convicted.

“Social adult day care and home health services are meant to help seniors, but as alleged, the defendants allegedly turned their businesses into a brazen cash grab of millions of dollars from the Medicaid program,” Brooklyn US Attorney Breon Peace said in the statement.

“My Office is committed to investigating and prosecuting those who plunder taxpayer-funded, federal health care programs dollars while purporting to offer health care services.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul has pushed for changes to the CDPAP to try and reign in out of control spending as well as waste, fraud and abuse in the program. Albany and Washington paid around $9 billion to support the program in 2023.

Hochul’s plan involves cutting out the nearly 300 middlemen firms — like the one the feds say was used in the alleged scheme — and consolidate the industry under one company handpicked by the state.

The Post was first to report that one of New York’s most powerful unions, 1199 SEIU, has been working behind the scenes to ensure the chosen firm would remain neutral to unionizing the nearly 250,000 home health aides under the program and would advocate for increasing their pay. Experts say such a pay increase could increase costs under the program.

The middlemen firms worked heavily in the last few months to try and derail the contract from being awarded, including a PR blitz and several ongoing legal battles .

“This is a prime example of why we worked with the Legislature to enact commonsense CDPAP reforms that will strengthen the program and ensure taxpayer money is going to the home care users and caregivers who need it – not to unscrupulous middlemen,” a Hochul spokesperson wrote in a statement.