That open-door policy has proven costly. The Post found at least $179 million in stolen Medicaid funds linked to CDPAP fraud cases over the past decade, along with $1 billion in taxpayer money lost to middlemen operating with virtually no state regulation.
“CDPAP is the biggest fraud there is because it all takes place in people’s homes,” Harrow said.
Even the state’s own officials have sounded the alarm. The New York Department of Health has called the program a “fiscal crisis,” while Governor Kathy Hochul publicly labeled it in 2024 “one of the most abused programs in the history of New York.”
Despite vows to rein in costs, spending kept rising, topping $12 billion in 2025, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The past few years have exposed a steady stream of major fraud cases tied to New York’s home care and adult daycare industries.
The Post reports, in 2025, Brooklyn businesswoman Zakia Khan admitted to running a $68 million fraud operation, billing Medicaid for services her centers never provided. Two years earlier, another Brooklyn executive, Marianna Levin, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for a $100 million home health care scam. And in 2019, state prosecutors accused Farrah Rubani, CEO of Hopeton Care, of stealing $11 million through false Medicaid claims — money that allegedly funded luxury cars and real estate. Though she wasn’t convicted criminally, Rubani later repaid $148,000 in damages, according to court documents. Continue reading…
