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Attorney General James Puts Medical Transportation Industry on Notice, Announces New Actions to Stop Ongoing Fraud

Editor, Our Time Press
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Attorney General James Puts Medical Transportation Industry on Notice, Announces New Actions to Stop Ongoing Fraud

AG James Has Secured More Than $10 Million From Transportation Companies, Won Criminal Convictions of 11 Individuals

NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced new measures to stop a major source of Medicaid fraud by transportation companies that use fake billing schemes to steal from Medicaid and exploit vulnerable patients.

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) today issued cease and desist notices to 54 transportation companies throughout the state, warning them of potential financial penalties and prison sentences if they continue their alleged illegal schemes of overcharging Medicaid for fraudulent services.

The OAG’s investigations into the medical transportation industry for ongoing fraud have already secured over $10 million and led to criminal convictions of 11 individuals. In addition to issuing the cease and desist notices today, Attorney General James announced recent settlements with four transportation companies totaling over $847,000 for their illegal billing schemes.


“Companies that illegally profit by exploiting Medicaid patients steal taxpayer money and undermine the health care system that all New Yorkers rely on,” said Attorney General James. “Today I am putting the entire medical transportation industry on notice to stop these schemes that take advantage of vulnerable New Yorkers and steal critical funds intended to provide health care to those in need.

My office has already recovered millions of dollars and secured prison sentences for those committing this fraud. I will continue to do everything my power to shut down these schemes and ensure that state funds meant to help New Yorkers in need are not stolen through fraud and corruption.”


Medicaid reimburses authorized businesses for transporting Medicaid patients to and from covered medical services. A licensed taxi company enrolls with the state as an eligible provider and is then randomly assigned to provide trips to patients to specific, non-emergency, medical appointments.

The companies must use licensed drivers, proper vehicles, and bill only for services actually rendered. They are allowed to bill Medicaid for a base rate for the trip, plus an amount for mileage and any tolls.


The OAG’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) has investigated transportation companies across the state for using fake billing and other fraudulent tactics to steal Medicaid funds. The companies’ schemes often involve billing Medicaid for fake trips, adding fake tolls to inflate costs, fraudulently extending the mileage of trips, and using unlicensed drivers. In some cases, companies exploit vulnerable Medicaid recipients by paying them kickbacks in exchange for requesting transportation services from the company.

These kickback schemes can put already vulnerable New Yorkers at even greater risk. MFCU investigators have uncovered cases in which transportation companies exploited Medicaid recipients in need of substance abuse treatment to recruit passengers to use in fake billing schemes.


Today, Attorney General James announced new measures to shut down this method of Medicaid fraud. The OAG has served cease and desist notices to 54 transportation companies operating throughout the state, ordering them to stop fraudulent billing practices that steal funds and put Medicaid patients at risk. Fifteen of these companies have also received demands for repayment of fraudulently obtained funds.

The notices sent to these companies highlighted their violations and outlined potential penalties if they do not comply with the law. Medicaid providers who knowingly violate laws and regulations are subject to civil and criminal penalties, including prison time and financial penalties. If the companies do not change their practices, OAG will pursue all legal remedies to recover funds and punish the companies’ operators.


In addition to the cease and desist notices, Attorney General James announced four new settlements with transportation companies for violations of Medicaid transportation rules that will return over $847,000 to the state. These include:
City Service Transportation, Inc. in Erie County will repay $373,216.11.
AJ Medical Transportation Co. in Albany County will repay $350,000.
Safe Ride of WNY, Inc. in Erie County and its owner, Robert Sapienza will repay over $66,000.
Half Moon Medical Transportation, Inc. in Saratoga County has agreed to pay back $58,000.
Attorney General James thanks the United States Department of Health and Human Services – Office of the Inspector General, the New York State Department of Health, the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General, and the State’s transportation administrator, Medical Answering Services LLC, for their cooperation in these investigations.

Healthcare Advocate Divinah “Dee” Bailey Encourages a Watchful Eye on Personal Health

Fern Gillespie
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Healthcare Advocate Divinah “Dee” Bailey Encourages a Watchful Eye on Personal Health

By Fern Gillespie
When Brooklyn healthcare advocate Divinah “Dee” Bailey went to a specialist because of kidney ailments, she was shocked by the doctor’s response. “I was in crisis. I thought I was dealing with my kidney ailment. When they sent me for my clearance for a kidney transplant, I wound up having to get a triple heart bypass because my heart was blocked. I could’ve had a massive heart attack,” she told Our Time Press.

“We are not paying attention to our bodies.”
As a veteran high-profile healthcare advocate, she was stunned by her health crisis. For 2025, Bailey has made it her mission to tell people to pay attention to their health problems and to regularly see a doctor beyond getting annual check-ups. “There’s still not a concentrated effort of making people understand they have got to go and see a doctor and not wait until your body goes in a crisis mode,” she explained.

“Since COVID, people get on the phone with the doctor. Most times, he’s never seen you before. That means he’s not touching you. He’s not anywhere near you. He doesn’t know what shape you’re in. And before you’ve hung up the phone, he’s written a prescription and sent it to your drugstore. Healthcare has been taken down the road so fast. Then when you get in crisis, people want to self-help. They want to take care of themselves.”


Bailey is the founder of Watchful Eye, which works with local, state, and national elected officials on HIV and AIDS as it relates to communities of color. Her advocacy background includes being the New York State Affiliate Director of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDs and the Executive Director of the New York City Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. In addition, she is the Chief of Operations of African-American Clergy & Elected Officials, holding a major program on AIDS in the Black community at Medgar Evers College on February 7, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.


“I’ve dealt with HIV and AIDS, the discrimination and the misunderstanding about the disease itself. There’s still no cure for HIV. We still have over 100,000 people right here in New York City that are living with the virus. That means they could have the potential of spreading it,” she said. “We’ve done such a great job in terms of medication and everything else, but it’s still a spreadable disease. It could still be killing people.”


Although the television commercials promote living a longer, productive life with HIV and AIDS medications, Bailey stresses that there is still no cure for the disease. “People are still having unprotected sex. People are still trading needles. People are still living in the same kinds of behavior,” she said. “There are almost 2,000 new cases of HIV every year. And nobody is saying a word.”


The Watchful Eye is an instrumental partner in HIV and AIDS prevention and awareness through education. The Red Ribbon Revitalize Campaign features eight-foot-tall red ribbon banners on Fulton Street, New York Avene, Medgar Evers College, and Brookdale Hospital. “It’s an eight-foot red ribbon that hangs proudly,” she said. “It says to everyone that HIV and AIDS are not over. Get tested and know your status.”


This work with HIV and AIDS education secured Bailey as a healthcare community leader during the COVID crisis. “When COVID came, people were just like they were back in the 1980s — saying, ‘What is this? It’s killing people. People are dying,’” she said. “The first thing they did was to tap into people like myself and other AIDS advocates. Because we had dealt with the people saying, “What is this kind? “We don’t understand what this is.”


In 2023, Bailey had a successful heart bypass operation and a kidney transplant within months of each other. Her schoolteacher’s son was the kidney donor. “Governor Hochul calls me “a walking miracle,” she said.


“In 2025, I want to make healthcare a common conversation again and get back to basic healthcare education,” she said. “If you are the family leader, and you’re in a health crisis, what will happen? What’s the plan for your family?,”


“We have to go back to the basics. That’s understanding your yearly check-up. The different specialties for doctors,” she said. “It’s important to love ourselves. And in loving ourselves, changing our behaviors so you can live a good healthy life.”

View from Here

David Mark Greaves
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by David Mark Greaves


President-elect Donald Trump is talking about “not ruling out” military force to regain control of the Panama Canal or annexing Greenland, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and using economic muscle to force Canada to become the 51st state. It feels as though we are approaching the top of the Coney Island Cyclone, and we’ll be cresting on January 20th and from there on down, we can only pray and work to see that the infrastructure holds through the twists and turns and come to the end in one piece.


And then we have the media oligarchs to deal with: Elon Musk, with influence purchased with his X platform and $250 million on behalf of Trump’s campaign, and Mark Zuckerberg, who visited Trump and decided that Facebook no longer requires fact-checkers.
Between the two, they can allow the social media environment to descend further into an algorithmically organized chaos where knowing truth from fiction will become increasingly difficult and beneficial to those in power.


With tax cuts, contracts, and side deals, this administration and its friends are going to slit our pockets and the pockets of coming generations, leaving the country poorer, less healthy, and emotionally disturbed.


But leave it they will because the voters will soon be on to them, because like a junkie who always wants to be a little bit higher, the lust for power and their addiction to money will cause an overreach, and they will start to be driven back in the midterm elections.
Or maybe not. Maybe the fate of the United States of America is to become an oligarchic, kleptocratic, kakistocracy. A nation ruled by the rich, the thieving, and the worst among us. I never thought that would happen.


So now we’ll watch as Hakeem Jeffries, Leader of the Democrats in the House, works with the Republican majority to split off just a couple of their votes to thwart the worst and arrive at compromises in the legislative battles to come.


As the new administration comes to power and the rhetoric becomes real, we will have to alternate between holding on tightly and relaxing when we can for this next four-year ride.

Rev. Al Sharpton Delivers History Lesson for Brooklyn and Beyond at Antioch

Mary Alice Miller
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Rev. Al Sharpton Delivers History Lesson for Brooklyn and Beyond at Antioch

By Mary Alice Miller
The African American Clergy and Elected Officials organization hosted Rev. Al Sharpton at its first meeting of 2025. Rev. Sharpton brought a much-needed message to the first AACEO meeting after Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House.


Rev. Sharpton began his message with acknowledgment of Rev. Dr. Robert Waterman, president of AACEO. “We should not take for granted the unusual and unique blessing that we have in our own Robert Waterman,” said Sharpton. “To be able to convene this on a monthly basis and have people with the influence and some with power come together and become accountable is something we should not take for granted.”


Rev. Sharpton recalled the tensions around the building of Downstate Medical Center in the 1960s. Sharpton named George Lawrence, William Augustus Jones, Samuel Gray, and Gardner C. Taylor, who he called “giants in the ministry in Brooklyn.” “They said you couldn’t build Downstate unless you hired some Blacks at the construction site.”

Those and other local pastors went as a group and sat down on the site to be arrested to stop the construction of Downstate until they hired black contractors. Bishop Washington, who mentored Sharpton as a boy preacher, joined the group as one of the few COGIC preachers who would do that. But the other person that was there, that was uncharacteristic, was Malcolm X.

“There was a time that we did not find it impossible to come across our ideological, religious, and denominational lines because we understood some things benefitted all of us,” said Sharpton. “So when people see what we did later in life, it is because we grew up watching what to do.”


Sharpton explained, “One of the things that they had done so well is that they separated our generations coming from the generations before it. If they can cut you off from your background, from your history, then you won’t know what worked and what didn’t work because they’ve got you thinking history started with you.”


Sharpton spoke of how African Americans were divided to perpetrate the chattel slavery system. “They sent your daddy to Georgia, mama to Alabama, sister to Mississippi. Your name is not Kunta Kinte anymore. It is Tobe,” Sharpton said. “You come from centuries of Tobes because they forgot who they were. 246 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow, all of that works as long as we were divided.”


The constant in this country was working us without wages 157 years before 1776 and the formation of the Constitution 246 years after.
Referencing Lincoln, the Civil War, and the Emancipation Proclamation, Sharpton said, “January 1, 1863, slaves were allowed to walk off the plantation.

You are free now. But you have no money because you worked 246 years and never got paid. You have no education because it was against the law for you to read and write. You have no family because they broke up your family and sold them everywhere.”


Then Sharpton made his point: “We had no social structure. The only thing we had was our ability to gather together. That was the birth of the Black church. Everything we have started and came out of the Black church,” said Sharpton.


He continued, “The church was the first and only thing we owned in the United States. If they can cut us off from the black church, they cut us off from the foundation. Our foundation was the Black church. Black colleges started in the Black church. Black businesses started in the Black church. Politics started in the Black church. And we were able to convene and build from there.”


From Adam Clayton Powell to the NAACP and Martin Luther King and their efforts on behalf of Black people, Sharpton said, “We have become the recipients of winners and forgot how we won. We have become the inheritors of things that we don’t understand what we inherited.”


Issuing a warning about separating our children from the Black church and their elders that would ultimately strip away any self-pride and self-recognition, Sharpton said that James Brown (a mentor to Sharpton) told him, “When you were growing up, we gave you pride. The reason y’all fought to own things and operate things is we gave you pride. All I can hear is some of these rappers now calling us niggas and hoes and bitches.” Brown asked Sharpton, “What happened to you all?”


“If they can change a culture, they can change your perspective,” said Sharpton. “We have allowed them to invade our culture, our music by breaking down our churches and breaking down the culture.

Now we are mocking black excellence and seeing how decadent we can be. And our children have no role models. When I was growing up in Brownsville on welfare I thought I could be something. Because my stars and my heroes were something. But now what are they looking up to?”


Sharpton then said, “And in the middle of that, in the middle of the disarray comes a Donald Trump. Trump is a result of the breakdown of this country.”
Sharpton said two things are going to happen on January 20, 2025. Trump is getting sworn in as the 47th president. And on the other side of Washington, DC Sharpton will rally at Metropolitan AME church. “We are going to keep Dr. King’s dream alive because that’s Martin Luther King Day,” he said. “What I am calling for is forming a national committee to study the companies that want to stop DEI, diversity equity and inclusion.

Those that don’t want diversity in their company should not have diversity in their consumer power. If you don’t want us working there under diversity, then we don’t need to shop with you. One of the things we have got to do is organize around economic issues.”


Other speakers at the AACEO meeting were Secretary of State Walter Mosley, NYC Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviler-Ramos, Assistant Chief Commanding Officer for Patrol Borough Brooklyn North Scott Henderson, Chief Business Diversity Officer for the Mayor’s Office of M/WBEs Michael Garner, and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.

Abigail Rosen McGrath Passes, and Leaves a Legacy

Bernice Elizabeth Green
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Abigail Rosen McGrath Passes, and Leaves a Legacy

By Bernice Elizabeth Green
Abigail Rosen McGrath, founder and director of the historic Renaissance House for Artists & Writers on Martha’s Vineyard and direct heir to the Harlem Renaissance, passed on December 20 at 84.


McGrath: writer, artist, producer, actress, entrepreneur, mother, filmmaker, former street performer, Folies Bergère dancer, cook, a neighbor of Basquiat and muse to Andy Warhol – all this and creator of the famous writers’ haven, too.
The list of achievements can stretch from The Martha’s Vineyard Ferry to Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn.


With her late husband, Tony McGrath, she ran a street-performance operation from the back of truck outfitted with all the equipment necessary for staging a production. Their moving theatre was the first stop for some major actors.
The Bard College graduate was related to Harlem Renaissance stars. Poet Helene Johnson was her mother. “The Wedding” author Dorothy West was her aunt. (In fact, West’s book, “The Wedding,” was based on McGrath’s and Tony’s experiences.)
Several years ago, journalist Fern Gillespie introduced us to the amazing Abigail McGrath for a story to appear in Our Time Press.


It didn’t take too long to discover that McGrath, a regular writer/essayist for the Martha’s Vineyard Times, could write for us, as well. And she did with alacrity.
I noticed that Brooklyn cropped up in her writings, and in conversations. Like visiting a relative in Bushwick, or recalling the time when she performed with a cast in Brooklyn Borough Hall’s garden court.


It took me a while to realize that the Vineyard, where she launched her annual tributes to Frederick Douglass – on the beach group readings of the scholar-abolitionist’s What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? –was not her only home base, she tracked from the Vineyard to Manhattan and the West Coast.
Brooklyn was bedrock, too. She casually mentioned living in the Ft. Greene Houses.
“I was born in New York,” she said in a 2020 interview with writer Kyra Steck for the Martha’s Vineyard Times.


“.. and my mother Helene and her cousin Dorothy were born in Boston. They came here when Helene was 2 years old, and Dorothy was a matter of months. They were always summer residents (in the Vineyard) until the recession of 1933 and then stayed [year-round] because they had to give up their house in Cambridge.


“My mother moved down to New York City just before I was born so that she could say her daughter was born in New York City. She was a member of the Harlem Renaissance, and the key was to be born in New York.”


To writer Gary Comenas, she said in a 2007 interview, “Of all the writers during this period, my mother was the only one to have a child, It is so strange that she should spend her youth during the flapper period in NYC when life was filled with wild abandonment and that I should spend mine during the so-called hippy period in NYC – talk about wild abandonment! Like mirror reflections, only the mirrors were Coney Island fun house mirrors.


“So, here we have a poet mom raising a child on her own, not in NYC as was her dream, but in Brooklyn as was her reality. We are talking educated poor here – think about it, how many wealthy poets do you know? It is easier to get a job as a meteorologist than as a poet.”
Our Time Press is honored to be the recipient of a stream of stories, all original and most all unique to her experiences as seen through the prism of Brooklyn, where she was closest with her mother.


I recall the response to any of my requests like, “Abby, did you know Basquiat? I need a story on him. It’s due in a few days.” So, what we received was always more than a story. It was a love letter to a place and a time.
As an example of her “greatness” as is so apparent in the opening of the Basquiat story request. Blindsided with an impossible deadline, she opened the story with: “Did I ever tell you my Basquiat story? He painted the walls for a disco club in my building. When we left, his murals were still …”


History usually unfolded from her opening lines.
Earlier this month, I sent her a request to set up a video interview with her and a producer. The intent was to approach the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival with another request: to screen my short on Abby—the writers’ writer, the writers’ nurturer. She never informed me that she was in the hospital or that she was even ill.
She wanted to be encouraging without saying anything she thought would be a downer. A week or two later, I was informed of her death.


Martha’s Vineyard and the Renaissance House loomed clearly in my thoughts, with a smiling Abby in front of her abode. There was a gleam in her eye and a smile, looking like she was holding on to a secret.
What I know is her stories in Our Time Press for over the past ten years about 12 in all was her gift to Brooklyn, and she knew we would give it to you. She was the promise of the Renaissance of her mother’s generation to pass on the information and connect it that scholarship to the masses. It was passed to her, and now it was passed on.


But Abby was the connection between the renaissances – then and now – occurring in all the Harlems of the world. We just had to figure out where to go from here.
Note to readers: For more information on Abigail McGrath and to read some of the best writings this side of the Atlantic, please visit, mvtimes.org and vineyardgazette.com.
Our condolences to her sons Benson Hubbell McGrath and Jason Antek McGrath, and all of the artists, writers and crafts persons who ever were taught, worked or mentored by her.

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