A former White Plains healthcare benefits executive has been sentenced to prison for 12 years for fraud and money laundering.
U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Román also ordered Shawn Rains to forfeit $4 million and to pay, with other convicted defendants, restitution of $4.6 million.
“Rains orchestrated a brazen, years-long scheme against his employer, OrthoNet,” prosecutors stated in a sentencing memo. “The offense was possible only because Rains abused his position of trust as executive vice president.”
Rains, 57, of Le Bouscat, France, and previously of Ridgefield, Connecticut, was convicted in October in a two-week trial in White Plains. Co-defendant Joseph Maharaj, of Goldens Bridge, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and his scheduled for sentencing on March 27.
OrthoNet manages benefits for more than 80,000 healthcare providers nationally, according to its website.
Maharaj ran the claims review department and reported to Rains.
From 2009 to 2017 they approved bills for services never performed by three shell companies they set up.
The scheme began to unravel when OrthoNet discovered that a relative of Maharaj’s wife had been put on the payroll for a no-show job as an auditor.
Rains’ defense attorney, Murdoch Walker II, argued in a sentencing memo that prosecutors had failed to show that Rains had organized and led the scheme or received any funds from it.
The U.S. Probation Office calculated that Rains could be imprisoned for at least 17 years 6 months or to nearly 22 years, under non-binding sentencing guidelines.
Walker said the calculation “significantly overstates the seriousness of what is attributable” to Rains. He recommended “a significant downward variance.”
Assistant prosecutors Stephanie Simon, Jim Ligtenberg and Benjamin Klein recommended 14 years in prison.
“Rains was critical to the planning and execution of the crime,” they stated in a letter to the judge.
“Rains’s conduct was particularly egregious because he recruited people to participate in the offense … who likely never would have otherwise committed crimes.”
Like many white-collar criminals, they said, Rains lived a double life.
“According to his family and friends, he was kind, and a good friend and father. Yet for almost a decade he carried on an extensive, multi-million dollar fraud.”
Judge Román ordered Rains to surrender to the district U.S. Marshal on March 25.
