Colts Neck brothers admit medical insurance fraud

Two brothers from Colts Neck can expect prison terms of six-and-a-half years each for a complex medical insurance fraud scheme that involved manipulating crash victims and taking kickbacks from health providers and lawyers for referrals.

In a Trenton courtroom, Anhuar Bandy, 52, and Karim Bandy, 53, pleaded guilty to second-degree charges of insurance fraud, according to information from the office of acting New Jersey Attorney General John J. Hoffman. Prosecutors are recommending the prison terms along with fines of $100,000 each. Cases against 10 codefendants have yet to proceed.

Anhuar Bandy served four years for a 2004 conviction on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, health care claims fraud and theft, brought by the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor, authorities said. The Bandys and 10 others were indicted in April 2014 for the scheme that allegedly funcitoned from June 2009 to January 2014, authorities said.

The brothers clandestinely controlled several chiropractic centers, hiding behind management and marketing company fronts. Neither brother holds a chiropractic or medical license required by state law to operate such centers, authorities said.

The Bandys created cash flow by employing runners to recruit crash victims to the centers, where the sham owners billed insurors, collected and deposited the checks, and siphoned off most of the money to the brothers' management companies, authorities said.

Investigators learned that runners were paid up to $1,000 for each recruited patient. They allegedly used the Open Public Records Act to collect accident reports in local police stations, then visited victims' homes to sell them on chiropractic services in the Bandy-controlled centers. They provided the transportation as well, investigators said.

Medical care providers and personal injury lawyers are believed to have paid companies controlled by Karim Bandy for referrrals involving more than 1,000 patients, investigators said.