A Goldens Bridge man was ordered on April 30 to forfeit $4 million and spend seven-and-a-half years in federal prison for defrauding a White Plains healthcare benefits company.
U.S. District Court Judge Nelson S. Román also ordered Joseph Maharaj, 42, to surrender to prison officials on Aug. 9.
Last Fall, a jury found co-conspirator Shawn Rains, 57, of Le Bouscat, France, guilty of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering last fall. He was sentenced on March 8 to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $4.6 million in restitution. He is incarcerated in Ashland, Kentucky.
Both men were high-ranking executives at OrthoNet, a benefits manager for thousands of healthcare providers nationally.
Rains was an executive vice president who oversaw the claims review department. Maharaj ran the department and reported to Rains.
From 2009 to 2017, according to court records, they approved bills for services that were never performed by three shell companies they set up. They also hired Maharaj’s stepfather, Edwin Romero, for a no-show job and split his salary among themselves.
Maharaj pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
The U.S. Probation Office calculated that he could be imprisoned for eight to ten years, under non-binding sentencing guidelines. His attorney, Stephen J. Riebling Jr., of Mount Kisco, recommended three years and a month, in a sentencing memorandum submitted to Judge Román.
Unlike Rains, he argued, Maharaj cooperated with investigators, accepted his criminal culpability and is extremely remorseful.
Maharaj said as much in a letter to the judge.
“Your honor, I have no excuse for committing these serious crimes,” he wrote. “With a contrite heart, I accept full responsibility for the harm I caused to OrthoNet.”
Riebling described his client as the product of a broken home where he and his mother were victims of physical and emotional abuse. Yet, he bettered himself through education, built a happy marriage, and became the “rock” that supported family members suffering from medical conditions.
He has been attending an Alcoholics Anonymous program to confront his abuse of alcohol. He has consulted on rehabilitation with the Prison Professors Charitable Crop. And he has saved $100,000 to apply to restitution.
Assistant prosecutors Stephanie Simon, Jim Ligtenberg and Benjamin Klein recommended a sentence within the Probation Office’s eight to ten years guideline.
Maharaj played a central role and ran the scheme brazenly for almost a decade. OrthNet paid him a good salary, yet he stole from the very company at which he had spent his entire career by abusing a position of trust.
“It was not a lapse in judgment or a momentary slip-up,” the prosecutors advised the judge. “A serious sentencing is necessary to deter Maharaj from engaging in this type of misconduct in the future.”
