Our mission is to expose and remedy corruption in the Probate Court of Cook County, Illinois. We assist, educate and enlighten families of the dead, the dying, the disabled and the aged to better understand their rights in order to protect themselves from the excesses of the Probate Court of Cook County. ProbateSharks.com is dedicated to networking the human element of people to people. We join together in reforming the corrupt Cook County Probate Court system.
Editor's note: Needless to say, our own more sophisticated crooks in the Probate Court of Cook County get away with this fraud on helpless wards and their families every day. I wonder to what extent the "Nursing Home Cartel" is involved with "drug trafficking" since legitimate prescriptions would easily be used for illegitimate purposes. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Feds: Attorney from Englewood Cliffs, husband stole millions from two NYC law firms
A prominent antitrust attorney and her husband, who is accused of being the head of a New Jersey drug trafficking ring in a separate federal case, were arrested early Monday at their Englewood Cliffs home for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from two New York City law firms where she had been a partner, federal authorities said.
Keila D. Ravelo, 49, and Melvin Feliz, 50, appeared in federal court in Newark in the afternoon on charges that they conspired to commit wire fraud. The couple allegedly arranged to have two law firms where Ravelo was a partner pay more than $5.75 million in legal consulting fees to two dummy companies they established and controlled from 2008 through this past summer, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a news release.
Fishman said the work was never performed and that the couple used the money — including $250,000 paid to a jewelry store — to finance personal investments and purchase items for their own use.
Ravelo had been with the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher until last month, a woman answering the phone at the company said on Monday. She had been a partner with Hunton & Williams from 2008 to 2010, according to that firm. Both firms, which were not identified by authorities, issued statements on Monday saying they are cooperating with the investigation.
Feliz had been charged in March with conspiring to distribute cocaine in a plot that authorities said included paying $550,000 to buy 20 kilograms of the drug in California and transport it to Bergen County, according to court papers. Authorities referred to Feliz as the “leader” of a drug trafficking organization in the filings and said he and two other men had been charged in the case after an investigation that included statements by a confidential informer.
The wire fraud charges announced Monday against Ravelo and Feliz carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of up to twice the defendants’ gross profit from the alleged scheme, Fishman said.
The defendants were arrested at 6 a.m., according to their attorneys, both of whom questioned the strength of the criminal complaint.
Ravelo's attorney, Aidan O'Connor, called it “weak” and “suspicious” considering the drug case against Feliz is scheduled to go to trial in about two weeks. Feliz’s attorney, Patrick Joyce, said it was “vague what Mr. Feliz did that was illegal” in the latest complaint, adding that he was unaware that either of the two law firms had complained about losing money.
The Internal Revenue Service special agent who signed the complaint, Daniel Garrido, wrote that he did “not set forth each and every fact that I know concerning this investigation” because the complaint is “being submitted for a limited purpose.” The complaint alleged that the couple “conspired with each other and others” to defraud two law firms and a client.
Fishman said the Drug Enforcement Administration was part of the investigation along with the IRS, but did not provide details about their participation or link the case to the drug charges against Feliz.
Ravelo had authority to approve payments from the law firms to the dummy companies because she was a partner, Fishman said. Garrido wrote that attorneys who worked with Ravelo told authorities that they never reviewed the legal consulting work that purportedly had been produced by those companies.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hammer asked prosecutors to present more evidence today when a bail hearing for Feliz, who remained in custody Monday evening, is scheduled to continue.
Ravelo, whose bail was set at $500,000, was released Monday after posting security in the form of a painting she said was worth $125,000, a $200,000 retirement fund and $325,000 of equity in a Miami condo. According to tax records, she owns two homes in Englewood Cliffs, one assessed at $2.4 million and the other at $1.4 million.
Two months ago, Ravelo was highlighted in a magazine segment called “Women Worth Watching” published by the Profiles in Diversity Journal. She wrote about herself for the article, which included a picture of her with first lady Michelle Obama, saying she specializes in antitrust litigation and has been working with the same “core team” of “smart, ambitious lawyers” for 10 years.
Two years ago, she was named to the board of directors of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, an organization that helps impoverished families receive help from government agencies. She is no longer listed as a board member.
Federal authorities said that one company set up by Ravelo and her husband obtained more than $5 million from the two law firms, and another company the couple controlled received $750,000 from the second firm. The bank account for the first consulting company was in Nevada while the second company had bank accounts in New Jersey, authorities said.
According to the complaint, Hunton & Williams paid $2 million for legal consulting related to one case from 2008 through 2010, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher paid another $2 million from 2010 through this past summer related to the same case. The client in that case, who has not been identified by authorities, has been cooperating with the investigation, Fishman said.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s chief marketing officer, Antoinette McGovern, issued a written statement on Monday saying Ravelo no longer is with the firm. “We have been cooperating fully with the authorities and have no further comment to make at this time,” she wrote.
Hunton & Williams issued a statement saying the firm is cooperating with authorities and is “committed to meeting and exceeding the highest ethical and legal standards, and any behavior to the contrary is not tolerated by the Firm.”
Email: koloff@northjersey.com
NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney has closed the well-publicized investigation of the handling of the $300 million fortune of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark — without charging anyone with a crime.
The news provides a note of vindication for Clark’s attorney and accountant, who fell under suspicion after managing the finances of the copper heiress while she lived for two decades in a simple hospital room in New York City. Documents and testimony backed up the men’s story: They were carrying out her wishes, not controlling her but doing as she directed, selling off her property to raise cash to fuel her relentless generosity to friends and strangers.
Even as she reached 104 years old, Clark remained lucid and competent, according to testimony of witnesses in the legal battle over Clark’s last will and testament — including independent witnesses who received no gifts from her. Transcripts of all the depositions in the estate fight, from more than 50 witnesses, were examined by NBC News.
The assistant district attorney in the criminal investigation, Elizabeth “Liz” Loewy, visited Clark three times at Beth Israel Medical Center, finding no signs of delirium or confusion. Loewy held the hand of the 104-year-old patient in the summer of 2010, conversing with Clark in French and English. Although Clark then was nearly blind, Loewy found that Clark could understand her, and could speak clearly enough to communicate her answers.
As chief of the Elder Abuse Unit of the DA’s office, Loewy had successfully prosecuted the son and attorney of heiress Brooke Astor in 2009 on charges of forgery and grand larceny from Astor’s accounts. In 2010 Loewy turned her attention to the affairs of Huguette Clark, a recluse who had nearly three times as much money as the socialite Astor. The DA’s office set aside a room for two detectives and a forensic accountant to examine Clark’s financial records.
Documents and testimony showed that when Clark’s best Stradivarius violin was sold for $6 million, and when a Renoir painting was auctioned for $23 million, the heiress not only authorized the sales but complained that the prices should have been higher. The millions of dollars in extravagant gifts made from her accounts were either written in her own steady handwriting in the checkbook that she kept in the bedside table in her hospital room, or were paid out by her attorney and accountant with her written authorization. And the documents and testimony showed that Clark was not kept away from her distant relatives, but made her own decisions about whom to speak with in person or by phone.
From “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune”One of three $5 million checks that Huguette Clark wrote to her private duty nurse, Hadassah Peri, who received more than $31 million. Peri worked for Clark for twenty years, including 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for many years. She said, “I give my life to Madame.”
Investigations can begin in the headlines but end in silence. The Clark case’s conclusion was revealed in an offhand fashion, in a reply to a public records request filed by NBC News. In denying NBC’s request for records of the Clark investigation, the office of District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. cited New York criminal law, which seals records of closed investigations. Vance’s public records officer, Sarah Hines, wrote that “the investigation from which you are seeking material was closed without the filing of criminal charges.” In its letter sent last week, the district attorney’s office did not say when the investigation ended, and a spokeswoman for the office declined to answer questions.
Attorneys for the two men reacted with satisfaction.
Robert J. Anello, who represented Clark’s attorney, Wallace “Wally” Bock, 82, said, “Wally Bock always acted in the interest of Mrs. Clark and is gratified that this matter has been successfully concluded.”
Robert A. Giacovas, an attorney for Clark’s accountant and health care proxy, Irving “Irv” Kamsler, 67, said, “After decades of service to Mrs. Clark on a personal and professional level, Mr. Kamsler is gratified to hear that the criminal investigation is closed.” “Cute as pie”
The Estate of Huguette M. Clark, from the book “Empty Mansions.”Caption: Huguette Clark was shy, but not sad. Her friends and the few relatives who knew her describe her as cheerful, gracious, stubborn, devoted to her art, generous to friends and strangers. She poses in a Japanese print dress in the 1940s.
Huguette (pronounced “oo-GET”) Marcelle Clark was the youngest child of Sen. William Andrews Clark (1839-1925), one of the copper kings of Montana, a railroad builder, founder of Las Vegas, and one of the richest men of the Gilded Age. His daughter, born in Paris in 1906 while her father was in the Senate battling Teddy Roosevelt’s environmental reforms, died during the Obama administration in 2011, two weeks short of her 105th birthday.
The investigation was launched in 2010 after a series of reports by NBC News about the heiress whose fabulous properties sat unoccupied in New York, Connecticut and California. Her private-duty nurse had received $31 million in gifts. Clark had signed two wills, one that by default left most of her property to her distant relatives, and then six weeks later a second will cutting out the family entirely. The attorney and accountant, who were named in the second will as beneficiaries of $500,000 each, or about one-third of one percent of her estate, had inherited part of the property of another elderly client, who was the attorney’s colleague and the accountant’s friend. (No allegations of misconduct were made in that case.) And the accountant was a registered sex offender, after pleading guilty to a felony charge of attempting to disseminate indecent material to minors.
“The whole story is utterly mysterious but equally frightening,” one of Huguette’s bankers confided in 2010. “Poor Miss Clark sounds like one in a long list of rich, isolated old ladies taken advantage of by supposedly trustworthy advisers.”
But what had seemed suspicious from the outside — a woman who had made herself vulnerable to elder abuse by secluding herself from the world — turned out to be more nuanced. Documents and testimony in the estate contest revealed a shy but strong-willed woman of unusual generosity. Huguette Clark was an artist, a painter and doll collector. Skittish around strangers, she engaged regularly with a circle of friends through letters and phone calls. Clark’s generosity had made her cash poor even while she had a net worth of more than $300 million. Documents and testimony showed that Clark had been selling property to give large gifts — $10 million to her best friend, a series of $5 million checks to her nurse, even $25,000 to the hospital workers who fixed her television and brought her glasses of warm milk in the morning.
A neurologist visited Clark in 2005, six months after she signed her last will cutting off her distant relatives from her father’s first marriage. The 99-year-old heiress was alert and cheerful, neurologically normal in every way, according to Clark’s medical records.
“She seemed cute as pie,” Dr. Louise Klebanoff testified, “perfectly content.” The patient gave the doctor a tour of the Japanese model houses that she designed, showed the doctor her family photo albums, and told of the house where she grew up, the largest in New York, with 121 rooms for a family of four. Attribution:
NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney has closed the… September 13, 2014 MyNextFone.com http://www.mynextfone.co.uk/storyline/new-york-the-manhattan-district-attorney-has-closed-the-h19671.html
Ninety people arrested across U.S. in $260 million Medicare fraud
ByZachary Fagenson13 hours ago
By Zachary Fagenson
MIAMI (Reuters) - Ninety people, including doctors, pharmacy owners and elderly patients, were arrested this week in six cities and charged with submitting fake billings to Medicare worth nearly $260 million, federal officials said on Tuesday.
"They each tried to use the Medicare program as their own personal ATM machine and to line their pockets with our money," U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer told reporters.
Since 2007, when federal agencies stepped up efforts to crack down on Medicare fraud, authorities have arrested and charged more than 1,900 people who collectively have falsely billed more than $6 billion to the government health program for the elderly and disabled.
A majority of the recent arrests were made in south Florida, which has emerged as a hotbed of Medicare fraud.
Among those arrested this week was an 85-year-old man on Medicare who allegedly received kickbacks in exchange for ordering home healthcare services.
Eduardo Perez de Morales, 26, was charged with laundering the proceeds of healthcare schemes through a remittance company that sent money to Cuba.
Arrests were also made in Detroit, New York City, Los Angeles, Houston and Tampa.
The schemes used to bleed millions from Medicare ranged from recruiters paying elderly individuals to file excessive claims to home healthcare agencies seeking payment for services never performed and medical supply companies billing for equipment that was never ordered, officials said.
Yet the greatest concern was raised over fraud in Medicare Part D, which provides drug benefits for elderly and disabled people through private insurers.
"We find ourselves to constantly be engaged in a game of whack-a-mole," Ferrer said. "These small pharmacies, which some people can actually describe as holes-in-the-wall are actually billing a lot more to Part D than major national chains."
