- Zakia Khan, 55, sentenced to jail over fraud scheme involving two social adult day care centers
- Khan, marketers paid Medicaid recipients bribes to sign up for services that were never provided
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani-American woman from Brooklyn has been sentenced to 76 months in prison after she was found guilty of stealing $64 million from Medicaid program through fraud and kickbacks, the US Department of Justice said this week.
The Justice Department said Zakia Khan, 55, owned two social adult daycare centers— Happy Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc. (Happy Family) and Family Social Adult Day Care Center Inc. (Family Social). She also owned a home health care fiscal intermediary called Responsible Care Staffing Inc. and an entity that it said she used to receive and disguise fraud proceeds called Tanwee Services Inc.
The US government said from October 2017 to July 2024, a web of marketers referred Medicaid recipients to Khan’s social adult daycare centers for kickbacks and bribes. Sharing pictures as evidence, the Justice Department said Khan and the marketers paid kickbacks and bribes to Medicaid recipients to induce them to sign up for services that Khan then billed to Medicaid. It added that these services were never actually provided as represented to Medicaid. Photograph of cash seized when a search warrant was executed on Zakia Khan’s home.
“Between 2017 and 2024, Happy Family and Family Social fraudulently billed Medicaid approximately $64 million,” the Justice Department said on Friday.
It added that Medicaid paid approximately $56 million based on these false and fraudulent claims, while Khan and her co-conspirators used multiple business entities to launder the fraud proceeds and generate the cash used to pay kickbacks and bribes to the marketers and the Medicaid recipients.
The US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, Homeland Security Investigations New York and the New York City Police Department investigated the case. In August 2025, Khan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay health care kickbacks.
“Social adult day care and home health services are designed to support seniors, not line the pockets of fraudsters,” Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Miranda L. Bennett of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) said.
“Today’s sentence sends an important message that anyone who illicitly exploits the Medicaid program will be held accountable to the full extent of the law.”“
This is not the first time that Pakistani nationals have been linked to fraud schemes related to health care in the US. The US Department of Health and Human Services last week sought information on four fugitives it said had allegedly used a call center in Pakistan to steal Medicare Ids and flood Medicare with $703 million in fake claims.
In February 2026, two Pakistani nationals were indicted in Chicago for allegedly participating in a $10 million health care fraud scheme that targeted Medicare and private insurers.
