At least 119 current and former Amtrak employees conspired with New York medical professionals to swindle the company's health care plan out of over $12 million, the Amtrak Office of the Inspector General said in a report released Tuesday of what it described as the largest employee conspiracy it has ever investigated.
"The sheer volume of employees who cavalierly participated in this scheme to steal Amtrak's funds suggests not only a serious lapse in basic ethics, but a troubling workforce culture, at least in the Northeast region, in which blatant criminal behavior was somehow normalized," said Amtrak Inspector General Kevin H. Winters, whose office released its findings this week.
Amtrak is a for-profit corporation with over 20,000 employees that operates railways across 46 states and receives billions of dollars in federal funding.
Twelve Amtrak employees, alongside three healthcare providers, were criminally charged in federal court for their participation.
Two Amtrak employees, Devon Burt of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and a co-conspirator, Hallum Gelzer, of East Orange, New Jersey, allegedly worked with health care providers to recruit Amtrak employees to participate in the scheme, the report said. They found Amtrak employees based in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., willing to participate, the report said.
Employees accepted cash from the health care providers in exchange for using their insurance information, the report alleges. The information was then used to file fraudulent claims for services — ones that were never provided, the inspector general said.
Burt and Geltzer separately pleaded guilty in June 2023 to federal charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud as well as conspiracy to communicate extortionate threats, said the report. As part of their plea agreement, Burt agreed to pay $959,072 in restitution, while Gelzer agreed to pay approximately $1.66 million.
Six other employees have also pleaded guilty to health care fraud conspiracy charges, the report stated. It is unclear who the prosecuting agency was or in which jurisdiction the pleas were entered.
About 28 employees retired or resigned, and 30 have left the company for undisclosed reasons, the report said.
"In total, Amtrak's health care plan was billed over $16 million and paid out more than $12 million during the scheme," the OIG found.
The OIG initially started investigating when an agent noticed unusual billing patterns between the three New York health care providers and a high number of shared Amtrak employees as patients.
Amtrak said the agency was considering disciplinary action for the remaining 61 active employees involved.
In a statement provided to CBS News Thursday, Amtrak said it "has taken significant steps to address medical insurance fraud and, like many employers, calls on medical benefit providers and insurers to do more to identify suspicious activity and stop medical insurance fraud."
CBS News reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Jared Ochacher