Constantine Cannon Partner Gordon Schnell Featured in NY Post Article On the Rise in High-Tech Healthcare Fraud by Organized Crime

Posted July 20, 2026
By Gordon Schnell

& the Constantine Cannon Whistleblower Team

On July 13, the New York Post published an article on its investigation into the rise of healthcare fraud by foreign criminals using high-tech scams.[1] The Post interviewed and heavily featured Constantine Cannon whistleblower partner Gordon Schnell in the piece.

According to the Post’s investigation, international criminal networks are stealing confidential patient data from thousands of miles away and using it to bill Medicare for non-existent medical equipment and healthcare services. One of the main ways they apparently are accomplishing this is through automated voice bots and other AI-based chicanery to steal patient data and dupe Medicare into paying for products and services never provided.

The Post pointed to a string of recent Government actions against foreign actors for allegedly engaging in this kind of misbehavior. This includes what the Post characterized as a “jaw-dropping phantom catheter scam” carried out by the Russian mob and allegedly worth $1 billion; a $1.2 billion Medicare fraud scheme using a Philippine call center to generate fake orthopedic brace prescriptions; and a Pakistani owner of a Medicare billing company collaborating with dozens of Arizona drug treatment centers to bill for substance abuse treatment services never provided.

The Post notes that in most of these cases, the criminals commit the fraud without setting foot in the United States. That is one of the benefits (and detriments) of the Digital Age and the ease of global interconnectivity. The Post further highlights how U.S. citizenship is not required to start many businesses, even healthcare providers, even for those here illegally.

The Post questioned Schnell on the rise in high-tech healthcare fraud given his extensive work with whistleblowers in this area. He pointed to several possible explanations for the trend.

First, he noted how ripe this area of fraud has become because of the massive amounts of dollars involved. According to Schnell, “the scale of the money that CMS doles out every year is enormous,” and that even if the Government “loses sight of a relatively small percentage of it, it’s still billions of dollars.”

Second, Schnell remarked on how conducive this type of fraud is for foreign involvement. “It may be that it’s just one of many criminal enterprises in which these foreign cartels engage and may actually be easier because it doesn’t involve smuggling or moving around products. It’s also clean, all paperwork-oriented, and you can do it remotely.” Schnell pointed to the extra benefit that many of these foreign organizations “already have systems set up for laundering the illicit proceeds.”

Finally, Schnell spoke to the rise of Crypto as another factor contributing to this healthcare fraud trend. “Crypto seems to be a big part of it because it’s so easily transferable,” making it much easier to move the illicit proceeds of these schemes without detection. He referenced one of his firm’s own cases, which involved government payments sent through various money transfer platforms and then immediately withdrawn and converted into crypto to hide the improper payments from detection or tracing. “Once it’s in crypto, it can be moved much more easily.”

The bottom line for Schnell is that with so much of the billing and payments “tied into automation and AI” these days, it has become much more difficult for the Government to protect against Medicare fraud. “That makes the role of whistleblowers more important than ever before,” Schnell says. “Insiders with firsthand knowledge of the fraud have become the most important bulwark against fraud, a fact that Government has repeatedly acknowledged, as reflected in the ever-growing number of whistleblower rewards programs it has recently created.”

If you would like to learn more about these whistleblower rewards programs, our numerous whistleblower successes, or what it means to be a whistleblower more broadly, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will connect you with an experienced member of the Constantine Cannon whistleblower team for a free and confidential consultation.

To review the NY Post piece in full, please click here.