N.J. nabs 12 in multimillion-dollar accident-insurance scheme

Twelve New Jersey residents, including a lawyer, a doctor and two chiropractors, have been charged with participating in a sophisticated scheme that recruited accident victims as clients.

Acting Attorney General John Hoffman says illegal runners obtained traffic accident reports from police stations and visited victims’ homes to persuade them to use chiropractic facilities owned by two brothers from Colts Neck, said acting Attorney General John Hoffman at a Thursday news conference in Trenton.

Hoffman says those patients were then sent to a doctor and a lawyer who made illegal payments to the brothers, whom Hoffman described as the ringleaders, for the referrals.

The brothers, 50-year-old Anhuar Bandy and 53-year-old Karim Bandy, were based in Monmouth County. The other suspects arrested are from Bergen, Morris and Union counties.

“Today’s charges reveal a massive criminal trifecta as the tentacles of the fraud reached into the medical system, the legal system, and the insurance system with these defendants ultimately extracting millions of dollars for themselves,” he said.

Those involved in motor vehicle accidents have enough to deal with without “worrying about becoming pawns in an illicit and egregious scheme aimed at generating millions of dollars in illegal and ill gotten profits,” he said.

Insurance companies were billed millions of dollars for the services, said Hoffman. The fraud affects the public because it causes insurance premiums to go up.