Another verdict in the case of “Russian clinics” has been handed down in Brooklyn

31 in May, federal judge of the Southern District of New York, Jeffrey Berman, sentenced 36 to months of imprisonment and three years of administrative supervision after the release of 49-year-old Brooklyn Asher Oleg Kataev.

Фото: Depositphotos

Two weeks earlier, on May 17, the same judge sentenced 56-year-old Marina Berman from Manhattan to the same punishment. Arrested with a group of 12 partners in January 2017 of the year after 10 months have pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit various types of fraud with federal health programs Medicare and Medicaid. Released after his arrest on bail of one million dollars, which was contributed by real estate, Marina Berman is still at large, although her federal prison number 78612-054 is assigned to her. Oleg Kataev was then released for 500 thousand dollars.

Marina's husband and accomplice, 55-year-old Alexander Berman, pleaded guilty on May 18, 2016 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on May 2017, 10, which he will serve at Otisville Federal Prison in northeastern New York. In addition to the Berman spouses, the criminal group included 9 people, of whom “ours” were doctors Oleg Kataev and Lina Zhitnik, clinic manager Alla Tsirlina, as well as “outpatients” Ivan Voychak and Eduard Miselevich. The accused faced up to 20 years in prison, and all of them, except Zhitnik, pleaded guilty, which, as can be seen from the sentences of Marina Berman and Oleg Kataev, reduced this term by almost seven times. The trial of Lina Zhitnik is scheduled for November 26 this year.

In November 2017, Oleg Kataev confirmed to judge Jeffrey Berman that he had cheated with the programs Medicare and Medicaid, and as a co-owner of two corrupt clinics, together with his sister Alla Tsirlina, “directly and repeatedly” participated in the payment of kickbacks to patients who were sent to their clinics. In a pre-sentence memorandum, his lawyers Harris Rosenberg and Steven Flamhart asked the judge not to deprive their client of his freedom, but to limit himself to administrative supervision, as he was “very ashamed and hurt.”

Kataev, the lawyers wrote, participated in the clinic scam for only 4 months in 2012, after which he “distanced himself” from “(Alexander) Berman and his criminal actions.” In addition, as stated in the defense memorandum, Kataev is the main breadwinner of his family, including his daughter, whose health condition requires constant support from her parents. There is a letter in the case E.Milrud, business partner Oleg Kataev, who called him a man of “boundless kindness, honesty and decency.” E.Milrud wrote that he addressed this to the court with a feeling of pride and regret, he was proud of Kataev and regretted that he had to face justice as a defendant in a criminal case. Federal prosecutors submitted their memorandum to Judge Berman, essentially repeating what Kataev pleaded guilty to last November and adding that he "profited handsomely" from his criminal actions.

Together with the “Russian” doctors Kataev and Zhitnik, their American colleagues Evald Antoine, Mushtaq Vaid and Paul Matthew are involved in the case. After their arrest and release on bail, Paul Matthew and Lina Zhitnik, through their lawyers, demanded that their testimony, allegedly given under pressure in the FBI office on video recording immediately after the arrest, be removed from the case. In one recording, Paul Matthew is seen sitting in an interrogation room, handcuffed to a railing along the wall, while the interrogator, or FBI Special Agent Ryan Blunt as they are called, reads him the "Read Your Rights" (Advice of Rights) is the FBI's analogue of the police "Miranda Rule", which gives the arrested person the right to answer questions only in the presence of a lawyer.

“So,” FBI Agent Blunt tells Dr. Matthew, “if you decide to talk to us, sign here. Um, as I said, or at any point in our conversation you decide: “You know what, I don’t want to talk to you anymore, I’m uncomfortable,” say so. We'll finish right away. But the whole point is just to try to hear your side of the story, so you can tell me what you did and who was really in command of the parade.”

“Okay,” Matthew says. - Yes, I can (take a pen). I am not a lawyer. I don't know what ... I know that ... I have nothing, I have nothing to hide, but ... I remember how my wife told me: "Do not talk to anyone." So she, she, she ... I do not know ... I do not know.

“I see,” says FBI agent Ryan Blunt. “But she ... I don’t know if she understood what was going on.” So?

“No, Matthew answers, I don’t know ... If I don’t feel comfortable, I’ll stop.”

“Yes, at any time,” Agent Blunt tells him. - As soon as you feel uncomfortable, we will stop the conversation at any time.

Paul Matthew signed an agreement to speak with FBI agents without a lawyer. No less revealing is the conversation with the FBI agents of the arrested Lina Zhitnik. At the beginning of the video, Investigator Ryan Blunt touches on the names of some of the clinics involved in the case, and then says: “Before we go any further, I don’t know, I’m sure John (another FBI agent) explained your rights to you, right? You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to a lawyer. And so on. In order to have a conversation with us, which I really want to do, and I hope you do too, you must waive these rights. OK?".

Another agent then tells Lina Zhitnik that if she is honest and helps them, then “to some extent this is an opportunity to help herself too.” At the same time, investigator Blunt explains that their conversation is still being recorded, but this recording will remain with them and will not be shown to anyone, but he must warn Zhitnik that the video recording is on. Then they read to her Advice of Rights, and Lina nods after each sentence, and when she is asked to read the text, she says that she cannot see without glasses. Zhitnik waives the right to a lawyer, agrees to talk and signs the “Acquaintance with Rights.”

All this is to say what kind of “pressure” are the defendants talking about, or not only in this case? A common phrase for many accused, defendants, and even more so convicted, who have nothing to lose, has become: “I was persuaded to cooperate.” This is true for the most part, but the offer to “cooperate”, that is, to tell everything known (and preferably the truth) about criminal actions, comes strictly within the framework of the law. True, it is also known that before the arrested person is familiarized with the Miranda Rule, he may be told that his fate is being decided right now, until he asks for a lawyer, but this is also more from films than from life. The words of FBI agent Lina Zhitnik that if she is honest and helps them, then “to some extent this is an opportunity to also help herself,” can be interpreted in any way.

It is another case when the defendant or the convicted person himself proposes cooperation to the prosecutor’s office or agrees to such a proposal. In this case, at the federal level, in the presence of the person interested and his lawyer, a typical Cooperation Agreement, in a dozen points of which more responsibilities than rights. Becoming a secret informant (Confidential Informant - CI) or a prosecution witness (Cooperfting Witness - CW), he (or she) undertakes, first of all, to tell about himself all the criminal offense to the smallest details. If in the future episodes emerge from the story, he (or she) is not responsible for them. In addition, CI / CW undertakes to tell everything (or others) he / she knows about crimes committed or planned by others.

Take the same Alexander Berman, who was recognized as the leader of the above-mentioned criminal group. After his arrest, he offered to help the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office assist in the investigation, but his proposal was rejected. In the past, Alexander Berman was a secret informant for the FBI and the prosecutor’s office for several years, for which, due to his first criminal record in 2012, all for the same medical frauds did not receive imprisonment, but two years of probation.

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