A new guilty plea has surfaced in one of the largest insurance fraud conspiracies in New York that involved a social media influencer who made millions bribing 911 operators, medical personnel, and police officers for the confidential information of tens of thousands of motor vehicle accident victims.
That plea came from Bradley Pierre, who admitted he conspired to commit bribery and conspired to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Federal officials say Pierre orchestrated a $60 million ruse targeting no-fault automobile insurance companies.
New York law dictates that no-fault insurance laws require a driver’s automobile insurance company to pay automobile insurance claims automatically for certain types of motor vehicle accidents, provided that the claim is legitimate and below a particular monetary threshold. Under these requirements, insurance companies will often pay medical service providers directly for the treatment they provide to motor vehicle accident victims without the need to bill the victims themselves.
This process resolves insurance claims without issuing blame or fault to the involved parties in the accident, bypassing lengthy disputes and the costs associated with an accident investigation.
From 2008 to 2021, Pierre staged a no-fault insurance scheme to cheat insurance companies out of millions of dollars by setting up illegal medical clinics in New York to personally profit from. While no doctors worked at these clinics, Pierre coached non-physicians to lie under oath that the clinics were owned and operated by licensed doctors so they could send fraudulent bills to insurance companies. These individuals also lied about the facilities’ finances.
Pierre would then steer patients to his wife’s law firm, where he was a manager, to seek legal representation and file lawsuits against insurance companies. He also worked with the owner of an MRI facility who would falsely report injuries in MRI reports and bribed medical offices to send patients to that facility and his clinics.
These falsified injuries allowed his illegal clinics to fraudulently bill insurance companies for additional, unnecessary medical services and allowed attorneys to falsely claim injuries in lawsuits against insurance companies.
Then, starting in 2015, he enlisted others to bribe hospital employees, 911 dispatchers, and other individuals for the confidential names and numbers of motor vehicle accident victims. Those co-conspirators would then call those victims and lie to them to coax them to receive medical treatment at Pierre’s clinics and seek legal representation from his wife’s firm.
Some of those bribes and calls to victims were coordinated by Jelani Wray, who is currently serving a seven-year sentence for his senior role in the scheme, according to investigators.
Wray and his wife were a well-known couple on Instagram who frequently promoted their lavish lifestyle on social media. One of the pair’s most popular posts was their Halloween recreation of a set of viral maternity photos posted by Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.
After Wray bribed hospital employees and dispatchers and then contacted the victims, the clinics and lawyers paid Wray and his associates kickbacks for these referrals. Wray also managed a medical clinic that he referred the victims to. Wray reportedly made millions from the scheme, and Pierre ended up paying Wray more than $800,000 in connection with these bribes.
Over the 13 years that Pierre was part of the scheme, he transferred more than $20 million directly into his personal bank accounts.
The two financial crimes he pleaded guilty to each carry a maximum of five years in prison. He’ll be sentenced by a judge in May.