WASHINGTON — State and federal prosecutors have charged more than 320 people and uncovered nearly $15 million in false claims in what they described Monday as the largest coordinated takedown of health care fraud schemes in Justice Department history.

Law enforcement seized more than $245 million in cash, luxury vehicles, cryptocurrency, and other assets as prosecutors warned of a growing push by transnational criminal networks to exploit the U.S. health care system. As part of the sweeping crackdown, officials identified perpetrators based in Russia, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, and other countries.

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“These criminals didn’t just steal someone else’s money. They stole from you,” Matthew Galeotti, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division, told reporters Monday. “Every fraudulent claim, every fake billing, every kickback scheme represents money taken directly from the pockets of American taxpayers who fund these essential programs through their hard work and sacrifice.”

The alleged $14.6 billion in fraud is more than twice the previous record in the Justice Department’s annual health care fraud crackdown. It includes nearly 190 federal cases and more than 90 state cases that have been charged or unsealed since June 9. Nearly 100 licensed medical professionals were charged, including 25 doctors, and the government reported $2.9 billion in actual losses.

Among the cases is a $10 billion urinary catheter scheme that authorities say highlights the increasingly sophisticated methods used by transnational criminal organizations. Authorities say the group behind the scheme used foreign straw owners to secretly buy up dozens of medical supply companies and then used stolen identities and confidential health data to file fake Medicare claims.

Nineteen defendants have been charged as part of that investigation — which authorities dubbed Operation Gold Rush — including four people arrested in Estonia and seven people arrested at U.S. airports and at the border with Mexico, prosecutors said. The scheme involved the stolen identities and personal information of more one million Americans, according to the Justice Department.

“It’s not done by small time operators,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “These are organized syndicates who are designing to hurt America.”

By JAMES POLLARD, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan had some complications while fundraising on his own website last fall.

Several friends wanted to help Cadogan reach his $28,000 goal as he crowdfunded for a Los Angeles area wilderness rescue team. But they tried to donate through a lesser-known wealth management tool called a donor-advised fund, or a DAF, a no-frills investing vehicle for money earmarked as eventual charitable gifts. After cutting checks and waiting three weeks, Cadogan said, the money finally arrived.

“It was just a bit of a thing,” he added. “If they were using a Giving Fund, it would take ten seconds.”

Giving Funds are GoFundMe’s latest in a flurry of product rollouts with the purported goal of moving stagnant U.S. charitable contributions beyond the 2% GDP mark where totals have long hovered. But the for-profit company’s DAF, announced Monday, enters a crowded market of more than a thousand providers — products often with older, wealthier clienteles that are often criticized for warehousing gifts.

To transform the way that everyday users plan their donations, Cadogan will have to widen the appeal of DAFs beyond the likes of the technology entrepreneur’s circles. And he wants to change public perceptions of his company as just a crowdfunding site.

“We’re also hopeful that more people will start using GoFundMe for a broader set of things in their lives: not just that one fundraiser they’re supporting, not just that one nonprofit. But they’re coming in and they’re managing their giving portfolio with us and through us,” Cadogan said. “That connects directly to our mission, which is we want to help people help each other.”

A DAF boom — but for whom?

Donor-advised funds grew popular over the last decade among ultra-high net worth individuals as a tax-efficient instrument for grantmaking without the hassle of a more sophisticated charitable foundation. Donors can immediately write the contribution off on their taxes but face no deadline for giving the money to a nonprofit.

The idea: account holders could invest money they wanted to ultimately donate, let the funds grow tax-free while they sit and give themselves time to identify the recipients best aligned with their giving goals.

There’s since been a rush to court average givers. Legacy financial services firms such as Fidelity Charitable lowered the minimums to open accounts. Fintech startups such as Daffy contrast their flat fees with the hidden expenses they allege their competitors charge. All that traction brought IRS proposals last year to impose penalties on those who abuse DAFs and Congress has considered legislation that would require some deadlines for disbursements.

GoFundMe’s Giving Funds will have no minimum balances, zero management fees and donations starting at $5. Users can load their DAF through their bank accounts or direct deposits for free. Credit card payments will be covered through the end of the year and then face the company’s standard transaction fee of 2.2% plus 30 cents. Contributions can then be invested in a choice of exchange traded funds from managers including Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street Global Advisors.

Cadogan pitches Giving Funds as a way to be more intentional about giving — something he said user feedback suggests more people want. As he sees it, widespread adoption hasn’t occurred because DAFs have been framed as “wealth management products.”

“This is a giving product,” Cadogan said. “It’s something for everybody. And you don’t need to know the words ‘donor advised fund.’ It doesn’t show up.”

Moving the needle

DAFs remain scrutinized for allowing donors to reap tax benefits before they ever redistribute any money to charitable causes — even if the notion that the channel is being exploited is fiercely debated in the nonprofit sector. Opaque disclosure requirements make it difficult to put a number on the overall assets held within the funds. The National Philanthropic Trust placed the total at more than $250 billion in 2023.

Cadogan believes GoFundMe’s culture is uniquely suited to nudge users with targeted spotlights of the 1.5 million charities already active on the platform. Giving Funds holders will be peppered with information about local nonprofits, crisis responders, their friends’ charities of choice and potential beneficiaries that address their selected issue areas.

That “dynamic, alive community” is very different from the “fairly static, passive” financial vehicles in the current market, according to Cadogan.

“It’s essentially inspiring the money to move,” he said.

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Other features seek to encourage contributions by simplifying things. Users can set annual giving goals by a percentage of their income or a fixed number. Their gifts will tally up in real-time records to track their progress and ease year-end tax planning.

Streamlining the process was one area for improvement identified in the DAF Research Collaborative’s recent survey of more than 2,100 donors. But Jeff Williams, one of the researchers, said DAFs are currently hitting the “sweet spot of convenience and connection to nonprofits.”

The challenge for any new player, he said, is that it’s a competitive environment with many different options. Plus, he added, many DAFs already are “available-to-everyone vehicles” considering that half run balances under $50,000.

“Givers are voting with their feet that DAFs are increasing with popularity. More options are generally better,” Williams said. “Anything that makes sure we maintain or enhance the ease of giving, it makes me happier.”

But Direct Relief CEO Amy Weaver, previously the CFO at Salesforce, described GoFundMe’s entrance as “a game changer” that could unlock additional funds. Direct Relief, a nonprofit that supplies free medical resources worldwide, reported receiving more than 18,000 DAF gifts totaling $116 million over the past five years.

Weaver acknowledged DAFs have been traditionally used by those with more substantial wealth. But she encouraged people to view them as a “savings account” for “good works.”

“And GoFundMe, with its name familiarity and the fact that it really attracts people making smaller gifts, I think could be incredibly powerful if they can bring DAFs to that group of people,” she said.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Each year, retailers give American consumers plenty of incentive and enticement to do their shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday. And to be sure, consumers spend millions that day on the various sales and doorbusters that have become part of the retail lexicon.

But a wise consumer can find value and great stuff with patience, as well, saving their money for later in the season, when needs arise — and oftentimes bargains emerge.

With a notable purse to invest for the first time in his tenure as the Minnesota’s general manager, Bill Guerin will certainly have some incentive to be a Black Friday shopper on Tuesday, when the NHL’s July 1 free agency period opens. Guerin has identified offense as the Wild’s primary need, but has also talked of adding depth on defense and in goal. And there are plenty of good players available at those positions, even though this has generally been identified as a free agent class short of eye-popping.

“We just want to add. We want to add some pieces,” Guerin said in a meeting with the media following Saturday’s NHL draft. “We’re pretty set with our seven (defensemen). We’ll add some depth. We’d like to add some forwards and how that happens, I’m not sure.”

For example, the Wild have widely been rumored as a potential landing spot for goal-scoring forward Brock Boeser, an unrestricted free agent and with roots in the Twin Cities who may be interested in a homecoming for the right price. But with the league-wide salary cap rising from $88 million to $99.5 million for the 2025-26 seasons, a lot of teams suddenly have money to spend. So, player salaries could be rising, too — and more top players could trigger a bidding war.

For years, Wild fans have been waiting for July 1, 2025, when most of the salary paid to Zach Parise and Ryan Suter on their 13-year, $98 million contracts comes off the books. Guerin admitted that more than $14 million dead salary cap money prevented him from being more involved in free agency the past two years, and limited his options at the trade deadline.

Also starting Tuesday, Guerin has an open window to exclusively negotiate with superstar forward Kirill Kaprizov on a contract extension that some have predicted will be worth $15 million or more annually. While the GM has made no promises of a big splash when free agency begins, he has had conversations with Kaprizov and his agent about surrounding the high-scoring Russian with complementary pieces that could mean trips past the opening round of the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.

“They know the plan. They know what we’re trying to do. And we have the same goal, and that’s to win,” Guerin said, adding that in-season trades can be another way to invest bolster a lineup with talent that might not be available on July 1. “Sometimes it doesn’t just happen in one day, you know. But the biggest thing is that we’re going to be able to be players in the game again.”

By “the game,” Guerin specifically mentioned the Dallas Stars’ 2025 deadline acquisition of Mikko Rantanen, who played a key role in the team’s run to the Western Conference Final, as well as Florida trading for Matthew Tkachuk’s trade in the summer of 2022, which has helped the Panthers win the past two Stanley Cup titles.

“Big players do move, and we haven’t been able to be involved in that type of stuff,” Guerin said. “But if they come up, now we can.”

With the NHL’s version of Black Friday upon us, it appears wise investing and patience will be his mantras, even with the Wild back in the game fiscally for the first time in years.

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After the city suddenly cancelled an incentive for landlords to hold units for families with vouchers—covering one month’s rent while the subsidy application is processed—families in shelter and legal groups won a temporary court order to keep it alive.

A rental building in The Bronx. (Photo by Adi Talwar)

On July 13, the Montanez family will mark a somber anniversary. Milagro Montanez, her husband, and her high-school aged daughter will have been living in a homeless shelter in Park Slope, Brooklyn for two years.

They are three of the 130,000 people living in New York City’s shelters. “People like us just want an apartment. That’s all we want,” said Montanez.

The good news: they have a city-issued housing voucher. The bad news: it’s been really hard to use.

Between discrimination against voucher holders, a tight housing market, and a frustrating application process, it can take months to find an apartment with a CityFHEPS voucher, plus more time for the city to process an application.

As City Limits first reported, the city eliminated a provision intended to make the process smoother in late May. For leases starting before July 1 of this year, the city would pay landlords one month’s rent to hold the unit while it inspected the premises and processed the application. New leases would no longer get the payment.

Landlords, brokers, lawyers, and tenants told City Limits that eliminating the payment would make it harder for landlords to take vouchers.

The Legal Aid Society sued last week. The group argued that, in terminating the incentive with little notice and no opportunity for public comment, the Department of Social Services (DSS) violated the city’s administrative rules and procedures.

The decision “lacked any stated rationale and will cause homeless individuals and families to spend additional months in shelter, at substantially increased costs to the City itself,” the lawsuit read.

“The city provided absolutely no rationale for this decision, which rescinds a long standing, extremely successful policy,” said Pavita Krishnaswamy, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society who is arguing the case in court. 

Earlier this month, a DSS spokesperson told City Limits that the incentive, which has been in operation since at least 2019, was always going to be temporary. They added that it was being terminated as part of a cost-cutting budget plan as the city rolled out a new application data system that it hoped would cut processing times.

Friday, Judge Lyle L. Frank issued a temporary restraining order that prohibits the city from ending the unit hold incentive until he can review the merits of the case.

“On my desk right now I have more lost apartments and more people in protracted move-ins than ever before. So this was a very inopportune and inconvenient and horrible, even tragic time to take away the unit hold incentive,” added Stephanie Rudolph, a lawyer who works with housing voucher holders at Legal Aid.

Both DSS and the New York City Law Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

In March, the Montanez family found an apartment in Midtown that would rent to them. But they’ve been stuck in the application process since.

“Now I’m scared that I’m gonna lose this apartment, because it’s already been five months,” said Montanez.

Housing advocates at a rally outside City Hall in 2023, to call for expanding CityFHEPS. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

A frustrating application process

Montanez is an assistant teacher and her husband works at Amazon. They make around $4,000 a month—not enough to afford an apartment in the city and feed their family without help.

CityFHEPS vouchers require families to pay 30 percent of their income toward rent. The city picks up the rest. But that calculation gets complicated when low-income families like the Montanezes work multiple jobs with variable hours.

Sometimes a teacher is out and Montanez works more. Some days work at the Amazon warehouse is slow. Other days her husband gets 12-hour shifts. “Nobody works a job that is steadily an even number every single time. A check goes up, a check goes down,” said Montanez.

Each time a family’s income changes, the city needs to recalculate the tenant contribution and issue a new shopping letter (a document that lets them search for an apartment with the promise of a voucher).

Reprocessing applications can delay move-ins and frustrate landlords and tenants alike. Rebudgeting has lost Montanez’s family six apartments in the two years she’s been looking, she says. “How many times do we have to get re-budgeted just to get approved for this?” asked Montanez.

She found landlords willing to take their voucher in New Lots in East New York, by Church Avenue’s G stop, and on President Street in Brooklyn, but lost them all.

“That [President Street apartment] really hurt that because the landlord was so sweet with us. He was like, ‘I want you people to be here,’” Montanez said. But delays with the family’s voucher application meant he’d be forgoing months of rent.

“He tried his best to hold it,” said Montanez. “He’s not going to hold an apartment for months without rent. That’s not being money hungry. It’s called common sense.”

While still variable, DSS told City Limits the average processing time was about three weeks. A report from State Comptroller Thomas Dinapoli found cases where it took up to 10 months (DSS has disputed the findings of the report).

“[Department of Homeless Services] approves the CityFHEPS, [Human Resources Administration] sends the checks. So how is it that you’re not working together?” asked Montanez. “Please make it make sense.”

DSS, which oversees both DHS and HRA, says that new data systems will help reduce the time it takes to process a voucher application. The spokesperson said that 90 percent of applications were being processed by the new system, called CurRent.

“We are not seeing the improvements that they are claiming,” said Krishnaswamy.

Lawyers who work with tenants on voucher applications were skeptical of the city’s stated reasons for cutting the program.

“It’s frankly absurd,” said Rudolph. “This claim that the unit hold incentive is somehow not going to become necessary because they have become so efficient.”

A “for rent” sign in Brooklyn. (Photo by Jeanmarie Evelly)

Sticks and carrots

Some brokers and landlords are also concerned about the simultaneous loss of the unit hold incentive with the implementation of the FARE act, new legislation that requires whoever hires the broker to pay the broker’s fee.

Previously, when a landlord hired a broker and accepted a tenant with a CityFHEPS voucher, the city would pay half the broker’s fee (if there was one). Since low income tenants can’t afford to hire brokers themselves, the loss of city contributions to broker fees could be another expense that potentially discourages landlords from participating in the program.

The city did not respond by the time of publication to whether or not it will continue to contribute to broker’s fees for apartments leased with CityFHEPS.

The FARE act took aim at brokers who would collect large fees from incoming tenants without doing much work: sometimes asking for thousands of dollars just for opening the door to show an apartment.

But unlike leasing to market-rate tenants, brokers working with a voucher must coordinate with city agencies, housing specialists, and tenants, sometimes for months, to get approved for the program.

“They’re doing a lot of work and should be paid for it, in my opinion,” said Rudolph.

Landlords have to wait for the city to process applications, and submit the apartment to an inspection. Sometimes that requires forgoing months of rent from a cash tenant. 

But, once complete, a voucher is guaranteed rent. And until recently, owners and brokers would get a hold incentive or collect a fee.

“I think we need to balance the sticks and the carrots,” said Rudolph.

Searching for housing with a voucher is already taxing.

“I can’t even look for a job because I’m constantly [looking for apartments],” said Montanez.

The vouchers only pay so much—$2,782 for a family of three searching for a two-bedroom in 2024—making it hard to access certain neighborhoods. A February City Limits investigation found that voucher holders were concentrated in just a few parts of the five boroughs: The Bronx had 46 percent of CityFHEPS vouchers, but just 10 percent of the city’s population.

Housing specialists (social workers who help people in shelters find apartments with vouchers) suggested units in the Bronx or Queens, Montanez said. But she wanted Brooklyn.

“I want to be where my family and I are able to commute to work, my daughter’s school, things like that. If I want that then I have to look on my own,” she said.

Rudolph thinks financial incentives for landlords gave voucher holders more options.

“In certain neighborhoods brokers rarely get 15 percent of the annualized rent as a broker fee,” Rudolph said. A competitive edge for voucher holders can help level the playing field. “It really does motivate certain brokers and landlords to work together to get people with programs.”

Judge Frank’s order extends the unit hold incentive through at least Aug. 6, when he scheduled another court appearance. 

For now, it provides some relief for voucher holders and lawyers for whom the loss of the hold incentive threatened negotiations with landlords leasing for July or August.

Lawyers for Legal Aid are optimistic that Judge Frank will see the importance of the issue for getting homeless New Yorkers housed in a time of crisis.

“An agency doesn’t get to engage in this kind of action with absolutely no reason provided then ex post facto or after the fact say to you, to the media, or to anybody else, ‘Oh, this was actually our rationale,’” said Krishnaswamy.

Montanez hopes that if the incentive persists, it will make their prospective landlord more likely to keep holding their apartment for them.

“We’re good people. We work hard, we pay taxes, and we’re still getting the short end of the stick,” she said.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post CityFHEPS Voucher Holders & Legal Aid Sue to Preserve Landlord Incentive appeared first on City Limits.