Man Sentenced for Role in Staged Accident Case

FBI, Nov 30, 2007

BUFFALO, N.Y.- Thomas Croome, 27, of Williamsville, New York, who was convicted of theft from a health care benefit program on Feb. 14, 2007, was sentenced to term of 5 years probation, which includes 4 months of home confinement, by U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder, Jr., U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn of the Western District of New York announced today. The defendant was also ordered to pay restitution to Progressive Insurance Company and Gallagher Bassett Services in the amount of $46,666.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John E. Rogowski, who handled the case, stated that the defendant had been convicted of theft from a health care benefit program when he participated in a staged accident that took place on August 8, 2001, on Shirley Avenue in Buffalo, New York. As part of the scheme, the defendant rented a truck from Penske Truck Leasing and drove the vehicle to the scene of the staged collision. At the scene, a co-conspirator intentionally crashed the rental truck into a car owned by another co-conspirator, Yevgeney Kazhdan. When police arrived at the scene of the collision, the defendant and Kazhdan falsely claimed that the collision was an accident. Kazhdan and four other co-conspirators, who were passengers in Kazhdan's car, then filed bogus insurance claims in which they claimed that had been injured as a result of an accidental collision, when, in truth, they had not been injured and the collision was not accidental. Pursuant to the criminal scheme, the co-conspirators who falsely claimed to have been injured, went to a medical clinic operated by another co-conspirator, Maxim Levin. Levin then caused a number of fraudulent claims to be filed with Progressive Insurance for the medical treatments that Levin falsely claimed were necessary due injuries caused by the accident, which he knew was a staged collision. As a result, Progressive paid Levin and his associates $11,474 for the unnecessary medical treatments purportedly rendered to the "accident victims". In addition, Gallagher Bassett Services, Inc., the insurance carrier for Penske, paid out an additional $35,192 to or on behalf of participants in the criminal scheme, as settlements for personal injury and property damage claims filed by a number of the co-conspirators who claimed to have been injured in the August 8, 2001, staged collision.

Croome was the fifteenth defendant sentenced in connection with the staged collision scheme. Seven others have pled guilty and are awaiting sentence.
The conviction was the culmination of an investigation conducted by the Western New York Health Care Fraud Task Force consisting of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation Division, United States Department of Health and Human Services - Office of Inspector General, United States Postal Inspection Service, United States Postal Service - Office of Inspector General, and United States Department of Defense - Criminal Investigation Service, the United States Food and Drug Administration - Office of Criminal Investigation and the New York State Insurance Fraud Bureau. Other law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation were the United States Department of Homeland Security - Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, United States Department of Labor, United States Social Security Administration - Office of Inspector General, the Niagara County District Attorney’s Office and the Amherst Police Department.