FBI Adds 2 Accused Medicare Fraudsters to New Most Wanted List

Two fugitives were added to the FBI’s newly created “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list who are accused of defrauding the federal government out of hundreds of millions of dollars combined, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Wednesday morning.

In a post on X, Patel wrote that the two wanted fraudsters were added after the “FBI captured two in two weeks.”

The bureau said on social media that Khalid Ahmed Satary and Emylee Thai have been considered fugitives since 2022, with both being accused of perpetrating hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare fraud.

The FBI said it is offering a $150,000 reward for any information leading to the capture or conviction of either Thai, whose country of origin is Vietnam, or Satary. Thai is believed to have fled the United States to Vietnam using a fake identity after a federal arrest warrant was issued for her in 2022, according to the FBI, which did not list Satary’s country of origin or whether he fled the country.

In 2022, Thai was charged by federal prosecutors on counts including conspiracy to commit health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay and receive health care kickbacks, and payment of kickbacks in connection to a federal health care program, the FBI said.

Thai, a laboratory owner, is accused of contracting “with marketers to refer signed doctors’ orders and beneficiary DNA samples to the laboratory in exchange for a percentage of the reimbursements” starting in 2019. But the “genetic testing, for which Medicare often paid several thousands of dollars per beneficiary, was not medically necessary and often was not used in a beneficiary’s medical treatment,” the FBI said.

Thai’s laboratory also allegedly billed the federal healthcare program around $142 million for testing, and she was paid around $95 million, the FBI said.

Satary, who also owned several diagnostic testing labs in the United States, is accused of billing Medicare of around $547 million between 2016 and 2019, according to the FBI. He is also accused of conspiring with others by using false “marketing campaigns and illegal kickbacks and bribes to generate cancer genetic test samples that reimbursed between $10,000 to $20,000 per sample,” the bureau said.

He also “allegedly paid millions of dollars of illegal kickbacks and bribes to doctors and patient recruiters,” the law enforcement bureau said. Satary was indicted in 2019 on counts including conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and to pay and receive illegal health care kickbacks and bribes, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.

The Most Wanted Fraudsters List was created earlier this month by the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) as a means to target the top 10 alleged fraud criminals in the United States, similar to the legacy FBI “Most Wanted List” that has been used for years to locate especially dangerous fugitives.

Anyone with information about the two suspects is advised to call 1-800-CALL-FBI, Patel said on X.

Starting this year, the Trump administration tapped Vice President JD Vance to lead an anti-fraud task force targeting individuals engaging in waste, abuse, and illegal activities that involve federal benefit programs. The DOJ this week unveiled charges against more than 450 individuals in a sweeping, $6.5 billion healthcare fraud scheme.

“This is just the beginning. Fraudsters can no longer rip off American taxpayers. If you seek to harm or cheat Americans, we will find you, seize any assets and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference on Tuesday.