New York Residents Unprotected, Served Up To Criminals By NYPD Employees
from the YEAH-BUT-WE'RE-THE-ONLY-GAME-IN-TOWN dept
Yeah, it's real easy to sit back and second guess the hard work of law enforcement officers. Secure and safe in our warm homes, far away from the mean streets and thin blue line separating us from the criminal apocalypse, we have it easy. As one of the NYPD's unions pointed out, citizens like us are clueless. We've (and I'm directly quoting here) "grown up on the nipple of what's easy." We "have no clue what a NYPD officer does," and yet we criticize and disparage them.
Then one day -- after years of criticism and disparagement and [re-reads tweet] nipples -- we'll find we need them. "Evil will be at our door," as the NYC PBA says. When that happens, we cop-haters will call for help. We will finally recognize we need them. After all, when all hell breaks loose, who else is going to respond to our calls for help and… um… sell our personal info to insurance scam artists?
Six current and former NYPD employees, which included one cop and five 911 operators, were arrested by the feds as authorities smashed a massive $18 million New York insurance fraud operation, the Daily News learned Thursday.
Police Officer Yaniris Deleon was taken into custody in Manhattan while on duty Wednesday after federal agents surrounded her with assault weapons drawn, sources with knowledge of the case said.
[...]
Deleon, five 911 operators and a supervising 911 operator allegedly provided the medical insurance scammers with names, phone numbers and confidential information about car accident victims. The runners then reached out to the victims and steered them toward clinics that would bill medical insurance companies for treatments and procedures they didn’t need.
This is fantastic news for first responders and New York's Finest. Not so much because it makes some "bad apples™" look bad, but because it shows them there's a faster route to extra cash than timecard abuse.
If you give people in power access to a lot of personal info, they will abuse this access eventually. It's not an "if." It's a "when." Not everyone will abuse this access as much as these government employees did, but a wealth of personal data just a couple of clicks away is a very tempting target. Especially when it can significantly boost the income of the underappreciated heroes keeping the city safe.
According to this report, these employees made about $4,000 a month from feeding personal info to scam artists. It also says operators were promised about $24-30,000 "off the books" for continued supply of contact info, so it's unclear how much any of the arrested employees actually made assisting scammers. However, this selling of personal data allegedly dates back to 2014.
But the officer and 911 operators were only making pennies on the dollar. The middle men were making themselves millionaires.
The scammers received about $3,000 a referral to attorneys and shady doctors, according to court papers. The group made about 6,000 successful referrals over the last five years, netting about $18 million, officials said.
The names, addresses and contact numbers for about 60,000 car accident victims were steered to the scam artists over the last five years, officials said.
Oh my. This is going to lead to a whole lot of litigation. Government employees misusing their power and access to serve up citizens to scam artists is the sort of abuse that can't be handled solely through prosecution. The government may go after the involved employees and everyone on the non-government side who benefited from this arrangement, but plenty of residents are going to be legitimately pissed that the government they were told to trust sent them off to undergo unnecessary medical procedures.
Maybe this set of prosecutions will act as a deterrent. Or maybe it will just be seen as the exception to the rule, and abuse of access will continue at its normal pace. Whatever the result, at least more citizens will be aware how much damage the government can do with all the information it demands we relinquish in exchange for government goods and services.
And they'll see how much of this "thin blue line" crap is self-righteous bullshit. The blue line doesn't stand between civilians and evil. It stands between cops and accountability. Because if anyone took accountability seriously, this sort of thing would be far rarer than it is. It only becomes common when few people are worried about the potential downsides of abusing their positions. And when it's common practice, that's when people start getting caught.
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Filed Under: 911, fraud, insurance, medical fraud, medical insurance fraud, ny, nypd, scams
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GotDAMN, but that's a great pair of sentences.
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Forgetting the true victims
You forgot to mention one of the biggest groups victimized by this scam, the insurance companies!
Just think of all those poor insurance companies who had customers blow past their deductibles on scam procedures and were forced to pay out money.
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Sure looks like the thin blue line is a great way to the fat green line.
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"Government employees misusing their power"
This sounds really familiar, where have I heard this kind of thing happening before?
Sadly, far too many places...
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So will the cops try to escape this under "qualified immunity" somehow? And will the union stand up for the NYPD and speak out about the ungrateful feds?
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Re: Forgetting the true victims
Insurance companies are never out that money - they just pass it along to customers as higher premium rates for everyone. They're guaranteed by law to make a profit, so they usually spend all their time finding ways to show they're losing money to justify another rate increase.
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Besides stop and frisk, choke holds, shooting bystanders and cops, terrorism investigations and now kickbacks?
One wonders where they would have the time to do what they're supposed to be doing.
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Re: Forgetting the true victims
You forgot the /s.
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Re:
You forgot unnecessary wanton destruction of innocents' private property and straight up murder, execution style.
Maybe not (or maybe so) the NYPD but they're all the damn same now.
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Re: power corrupts
"If you give people in power access to a lot of personal info, they will abuse this access eventually. It's not an "if." It's a "when."
NYC is bigger than many nations in the world and the NYC police forces are bigger than most nations' armies -- that's a lot of centralized power for municipal government.
Of course this NYPD insurance scam is trivial in the lonnng history of NYPD corruption.
Two NY cops were recently convicted as Mob hit-men ... as they worked full time on the NYPD Organized Crime Task Force.
The movie "Serpico" was based on true NYPD events.
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Re:
"grown up on the nipple of what's easy."
He was raised by the right pair.
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Re:
Qualified immunity is not a defense to criminal charges.
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New York City has a special breed of hardcore criminal that few other cities have to deal with: violent, smart, fast, armed, in gangs, on a very limited number of streets, trains, bridges, tunnels, and waterways where one or two bad apples can ruin things for thousands of people an HOUR. That doesn't even account for all the other criminals, mafia, etc.
The thin blue line is real.
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Re:
Los Angeles and maybe Chicago and Miami are similar.
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Re:
And a lot of cops are in that group of hardcore criminals as well as brutal human rights violators. If the job is too difficult, maybe change occupations. Of course we need police - do you imagine anyone disputes that? But they should operate within the law, and be subject to the same laws and rules as the rest of us.
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and the 'powers that be' in law enforcement want there to be no security, easy access to all our information? this shows exactly what will happen! there is never, ever, going to be a 'fail safe' option for backdoors etc!
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Re: Re: Forgetting the true victims
Citation needed. Why would there be a market for reinsurance if that were true?
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lets do this..
When you have a child,
Which do you pay attention to...
The good they do,
The bad they do,
going to church and praying,
Learning all the nice rules to live by that dont work, or finding the ones that DO.. Legal or not..
think hard now..
WHO gives you the prizes and gifts...(wants something from you)
The ones that Only abuse you when you are bad..(want to correct you)
those that let you LEARN THE HARD WAY, on your own..(want you to learn the Hard/best ways..)
Think hard now.
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well said..
(the)blue line doesn't stand between civilians and evil. It stands between cops and accountability.
.....when it's common practice, that's when people start getting caught.
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Re: Re: Re: Forgetting the true victims
Because the goal is to keep the actual profits as high as possible (drained off via exec salaries) by eliminating the people who actually use their insurance while simultaneously using them as an excuse to raise everyone else's premiums.
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