The person is the third individual on the Most Wanted Fraudsters list to be captured in the past five weeks, the FBI director said.
A man on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, accused of a scheme to defraud Medicare of $547 million, was arrested by authorities on Monday.
The foreign national, Khalid Satary, 54, owned and operated multiple diagnostic testing laboratories in the United States between 2016 and 2019 that billed Medicare for “expensive and medically unnecessary genetic tests,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a July 21 statement.
Satary is accused of conspiring with several patient recruiters and telemarketing services to generate unnecessary cancer genetic test samples that were reimbursed by Medicare at the rate of $10,000 to $20,000 per sample.
To run the operation, Satary allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes and illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and doctors.
The defendant was initially indicted in 2019. However, Satary was later released on bond, with the condition that he doesn’t work in the healthcare sector. While on bond, Satary allegedly conspired with labs in Texas to continue submitting fraudulent genetic testing claims to Medicare.
A federal arrest warrant was issued against him in December 2022. However, Satary failed to appear for a court hearing and was believed to have escaped the United States. On July 20 this year, the defendant was arrested in the Middle East with a fake Mexican passport using a fake name. He was then transferred to U.S. authorities.
The Most Wanted Fraudsters list was announced by FBI Director Kash Patel last month. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud partnered with the FBI to compile the list, according to a June 19 X post from Vice President JD Vance, the task force’s chairman.
The task force was established through a March 16 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which said criminals and other individuals were exploiting various benefit programs intended to provide American citizens with a safety net.
Trump ordered the task force to “coordinate and accelerate a comprehensive national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.”
