Wheelchairs Funding International Terrorists

Medical billing fraud, a multi-billion dollar enterprise, is also funding international terrorists.

The Los Angeles Daily News this past May ran a series of investigative articles about organized crime ripping off billions of taxpayer and premium-payer dollars through false insurance and Medicare/Medicaid billing.

In yesterday's LA Daily News, the deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department's Counterterrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau is cited that, “illicit funds account for about 10 percent of the total global flow of money — up from about 2 percent in 1998.”

"Even if a portion of that went to terrorism, it's frightening," Downing said. "Not only that, but you see the convergence of organized crime and terrorism occurring."

Government fraud investigators, prosecutors and insurance industry leaders are set to meet later this month in San Diego to discuss strategies to combat the problem.

For example:

California Deputy Attorney General Hardy R. Gold is scheduled to detail a case he prosecuted involving 58-year-old Buena Park tax preparer Yakoob Habib.

Habib was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in a scheme that defrauded Medi-Cal out of $28 million and laundered much of the money to Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia and Latvia.

Gold said a search of Habib's computer found he had donated funds to a terrorist front organization, and visited anti-American, weaponry and hazardous material training Web sites.

Gold said the Habib case is not simply an aberration.

"In the course of working on this case, I've come in contact with people in other state governments and in the federal government who report seeing the same pattern of people who have come into this country, who commit fraud and most of the funds are not staying here," Gold said. "They are going back overseas. And it's very organized."

The FBI is on the trail:

"(Terrorists) have shown a propensity for raising money in the United States," said Richard Kolko, a special agent at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. "It's big enough that the FBI has dedicated a whole section just to work this issue."

So are other government agencies and insurers hot on the trail of medical billing fraudsters. For example, the Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund's July 2006 report on "Fighting Medicare Fraud" calculates that prosecutions and deterrence through the False Claims Act has a 15-1 payoff. But, that $15 billion between 2000-2004 is a small fraction of the $400 billion a year spent by Medicare, surely leaving many more billions being ripped off. Private insurers, also, are hot to prevent and recover false claims by medical providers. USA Today reports hundreds of millions of dollars of false provider claims caught through insurers' data-mining efforts.

What is lagging is connecting the dots among public and private enforcers and connecting the dots among perpetrators and terrorist causes.

Rachel Ehrenfeld is an authority on illicit international fund flows funding terrorism. Below, Ms. Ehrenfeld offers a guest post on the subject for Democracy-Project readers. Ms. Ehrenfeld notes the hesitancy to “profile” some of the abusers and their motivation.

Terrorism and Organized Crime Intensify the Economic Jihad
By Rachel Ehrenfeld

The stronger Islamist Jihadist groups become, the more funds are needed to support their activities. The stronger Islamist Jihadists become, they are able to extort more influence over criminal gangs. They charge "protection" money from drug traffickers and other gangs, and often employ fraudsters, or even assign members to carry out large scale "theft of highly enriched uranium and other nuclear materials," as well as commodities and fraud. They use the latest techniques of data mining to steal identities, which they then use to defraud the government, banks and insurance companies.

Health services and Insurance fraud, for example, is a major source of funds. According to the L.A. Daily News investigation, "experts estimate as much as $300 billion a year is lost to health care fraud alone in the U.S. -- more than half of it to organized crime." How much of it goes to fund terrorism is unknown, because most cases are investigated strictly as white-collar crimes. Although the criminals' country of origin is often noted (Euro-Asians or Russians, Middle Eastern, South American), their religious affiliation is rarely taken into account.

Los Angeles "Sheriff's Department Lt. John Sullivan, said, "organized crime groups in Los Angeles County are supporting international terrorists." But the complexity and magnitude of these criminal activities does not occur only in L.A. It is happening all over the country. Recently, an excellent series of articles on the links between organized crime and terrorists, by Troy Anderson, appeared in the L.A. Daily News. It is a real eye opener.

Defrauding the U.S. Government of hundreds of billions of dollars, thus undermining the local economy is just what Osama bin Laden ordered on Dec. 27, 2001: “It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means… Look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy. Strike the key pillars of the enemy again and again, and they will fall as one.”

It is about time law enforcement look more closely at the identities and profiles of the individual members and leaders of "ordinary" (drug dealers, human traffickers, car thieves, etc.) and "white collar" criminal gangs. Jihad is not done by the sword alone, economic and financial jihads are less visible, but more insidious aspects of the jihadist war to defeat the West, and especially the U.S.

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Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of American Center for Democracy (www.acdemocracy.org), is author of Funding Evil.