A New York City man reportedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars by exploiting a state program meant to help the elderly — all while his supposed patient lived thousands of miles away, the New York Post reports, and a slew of similar cases have also been exposed. Lawyer Richard Harrow who specializes in Medicaid fraud cases told the outlet the fraud uncovered in New York is ten times worse than that uncovered in Minnesota.
“The Post was able to identify at least $179 million stolen by CDPAP recipients over the last 10 years, while the program wasted at least $1 billion of taxpayer cash on middlemen.”
Ballal Hossain, authorities say, enlisted a dozen family members as paid caregivers under New York’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), which allows relatives to be compensated for looking after a sick loved one. Over six years, the family reportedly collected $348,000 caring for Hossain’s elderly mother in a Manhattan apartment, all while she was living in Bangladesh the whole time.
According to prosecutors, Hossain’s brother even pretended to be their ailing mother during surprise inspections. The elaborate ruse eventually unraveled, leading to Hossain’s conviction for grand larceny — one of the more brazen scams to hit a Medicaid program that state officials now admit is mired in waste and fraud.
Created in 1994 to help keep seniors out of nursing homes, CDPAP ballooned into a massive industry with little oversight. Anyone can qualify as a caregiver — no medical training, certification, or prior experience required.
That open-door policy has proven costly. The Post found at least $179 million in stolen Medicaid funds linked to CDPAP fraud cases over the past decade, along with $1 billion in taxpayer money lost to middlemen operating with virtually no state regulation.
“CDPAP is the biggest fraud there is because it all takes place in people’s homes,” Harrow said.
The numbers back him up. CDPAP spending soared from $2.5 billion in 2019 to $9.1 billion in 2023, according to state records. By that point, the program covered 250,000 recipients and employed 400,000 caregivers statewide.
Even the state’s own officials have sounded the alarm. The New York Department of Health has called the program a “fiscal crisis,” while Governor Kathy Hochul publicly labeled it in 2024 “one of the most abused programs in the history of New York.”
Despite vows to rein in costs, spending kept rising, topping $12 billion in 2025, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The past few years have exposed a steady stream of major fraud cases tied to New York’s home care and adult daycare industries.
The Post reports, in 2025, Brooklyn businesswoman Zakia Khan admitted to running a $68 million fraud operation, billing Medicaid for services her centers never provided. Two years earlier, another Brooklyn executive, Marianna Levin, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for a $100 million home health care scam. And in 2019, state prosecutors accused Farrah Rubani, CEO of Hopeton Care, of stealing $11 million through false Medicaid claims — money that allegedly funded luxury cars and real estate. Though she wasn’t convicted criminally, Rubani later repaid $148,000 in damages, according to court documents.
Fraud in CDPAP isn’t just a problem at the top. State investigators say some caregivers — who earn between $18.65 and $20.65 an hour — have billed for patients already hospitalized, deceased, or even for overlapping shifts with multiple clients. One insider told The Post that some “personal assistants” have claimed 23-hour workdays caring for family members, racking up more than $200,000 a year in wages.
The so-called ‘fiscal intermediaries’, private companies that process payroll and paperwork for CDPAP participants, have also come under scrutiny. By 2023, more than 600 intermediaries were being paid collectively up to $1 billion a year, some charging $1,000 per enrollee monthly while providing minimal oversight.
Governor Hochul’s 2023 overhaul sought to clean up the mess by replacing hundreds of intermediaries with a single administrator — Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL), based in Georgia. The transition, fraught with lawsuits and delays, finally took effect in April 2025.
The state health department says the shift has already saved taxpayers $1 billion, cutting administrative costs by more than 90 percent. What once cost the state $1,000 per participant now runs about $68.50 a month, officials said.
“Fraudsters fought tooth and nail for over a decade to keep [the old] broken system in place – but those days are over because we shut them down,” a spokesperson told The Post.
