Glenview Trainer Charged In $6.5 Million Health Care Scam: Feds

CHICAGO — A group of suburban health care workers and a personal trainer are accused of fraudulently pocketing more than $6 million from insurance companies by billing for physical theraphy, chiropractic and other services that were never performed, according to prosecutors. Four people were charged with health care fraud in a 22-count indictment returned Tuesday in federal court in Chicago.

Inessa Katsnelson, 50, of Glenview, was also charged with aggravated identity theft. Katsnelson, who was also known as “Inessa Blinov,” “Inessa Danuchevsky” and “Inna" is a personal trainer and singer who worked out of a gym in Northbrook.

Prosecutors said she and medical claims biller Maya Yakubovich, 52, of Arlington Heights, recruited friends and family to allow their insurance companies to be falsely charged for healthcare services that were never provided by various suburban clinics that were run by other participants in the scheme.

Many of the friends and family wound up with free gym training and massages, while also getting their insurance deductibles exhausted free of cost, the indictment said.

The scheme lasted from 2006 until September and resulted in the participants pocketing at least $6.5 million from at least nine insurance companies, according to prosecutors.

Katsnelson and Yakubokich were joined by medical claims biller Tetyana "Tanya" Voronkina, 54, of Mundelein, massage therapist Viktor Danchuk, 57, of Roselle and Yaroslava "Yana" Boyko, 76, of Morton Grove, which operated Prime Health Medical and Rehab Center and Health Choice Medical Center out of established clinics in Glenview, Northfield, Wheeling, Buffalo Grove and Des Plains and "purported to provide health care services," according to the indictment.

One of the group's co-schemers, according to the feds, was Beatta Kabbani. Kabanni, the owner of MedCare Medical Group in Glenview, was charged last year in a 13-count indictment that said she submitted more than $2 million in false claims. Charges included health care fraud and aggravated identity theft for the use of another doctor's identification number.

Health care fraud is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and a federal conviction for aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory sentence of two years in prison. All five people indicted this week are due in court for an arraignment Nov. 8 before U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman.

Earlier: Chicago Area Doctors Charged With Millions Worth Of False Claims In Massive Medicare Fraud Enforcement Action