MS-13, Russian Mobsters Running NYC Personal-Injury Racket

(Photo by KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)

Investigations have reportedly unearthed a New York-area insurance scam being pushed by suspected Russian mobsters and MS-13 gangs, luring migrants and homeless individuals into turning a minor accident into a $1.5 million-plus windfall.

“One-five is now on the cheap side,” an insurance lawyer told The New York Post in a Sunday expose of the scams plaguing the city and industry.

The scam starts with the mobsters and gangsters luring migrants into tripping or falling at a construction site and heading to a doctor to make bountiful personal-injury insurance claims that include using corrupt surgeons to perform expensive surgeries to help the migrants and homeless to college money that ultimately lines the pockets of criminal masterminds, according to the report.

The surgeries even go as far as destitute and desperate migrants and homeless people signing on for risky and unnecessary spinal fusion surgeries to rake in money they could only dream of.

The elaborate scheme starts with “runners” to find willing risk-takers to orchestrate the falls and forcing them to “shot callers” who pocket most of the settlements under the guise of high-interest loans they need to get the surgeries in hopes for a huge payday, according to legal papers cited by the Post’s anonymous sources.

“They’re regularly recruiting migrants and homeless people and in some cases are proactively arranging for them to come to New York,” one investigator told the Post.

The Russian mobsters are allegedly behind the loan shops cooking the numbers to steal on the backs of the risk-taking poor migrants or homeless individuals.

“They’re well-versed in this kind of thing,” a recently retired NYPD supervisor told the Post.

Doctors are cashing in on the surgeries, some deemed unnecessary, according to court filings and sources, the Post reported.

Among the most bountiful surgeries by corrupt doctors is the spinal fusion surgery for a suspected back injury that requires the migrant to have their allegedly healthy backs to be secured with screws and plates.

A MS-13 informant revealed the scheme through an alleged plot for a construction worker to fall off a ladder, according to the report.

The payouts are so large and “so successful for MS-13,” the source told the Post, that “rival gangs are now trying it.”

The Russian mobsters and lenders bring experience on the schemes, helping MS-13 “runners” get to their payoffs.

“That’s where the Russians come in,” the source said. “They have the lawyers.”

The growing scam has reached 650 allegedly fraudulent personal-injury lawsuits in four years with one insurer, Tradesman Program Managers, according to the Post.

“We’re talking billions collectively across the city,” an anonymous insurance executive told the Post.

A lawyer for Tradesman suggested the dead giveaway on a scam is when the alleged injured person goes to a lawyer before a doctor.

“They train the migrants how to act at some of these staged accidents,” Tradesman lawyer Kirk Willis told ABC 7. “And then when the people are hurt — allegedly hurt — they go to the lawyer first, not the doctor, and the lawyer then starts a course that sets up these fraudulent lawsuits.”

The scam is costing the insurance companies and contractors, who will be left to help foot the bill through higher premiums eventually.

“Every contractor is affected because their rates go up every year and they pass along the costs,” restoration company owner Steven Katz told the Post. “It affects every single building. It’s an undisclosed tax.”