A Nigerian-born medic with a history of identity theft has been arrested and accused of orchestrating a multi-million dollar fraud scheme targeting United States military veterans.
Airport Arrest Ends Alleged Four-Year Scam
Cashmir Chinedu Luke, a 61-year-old dual US citizen, was taken into custody at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday. Authorities apprehended him as he attempted to board a flight to Nigeria, his country of origin. Prosecutors allege that over four years, from 2019 to 2024, Luke illicitly obtained $9.77 million from the US Department of Veterans Affairs through a company he operated.
His firm, Four Corners Health, was contracted to provide non-medical, in-home care for veterans across several northern California counties, including Fresno, Tulare, Merced, and San Francisco. However, federal prosecutors contend that the care billed for was never actually delivered.
A Pattern of Fraud and False Claims
Court documents reveal the staggering scale of the alleged deception. Of the total $9.77 million received, Luke is said to have fabricated claims for services totalling $7 million. This sum represents approximately 10,000 individual false claims submitted to the government.
Red flags were raised when administrators noticed billing irregularities, such as claims for 28 hours of care provided by a single worker in one day. In a particularly egregious example, investigators state Luke's company billed the department $141,926.92 for services to a veteran who had died months earlier, in August 2022.
Further analysis uncovered a significant number of duplicate claims paid to Four Corners Health. Despite entering an agreement to repay $2.8 million and admitting to overpayments, Luke allegedly failed to make any restitution. He is accused of evading lawyers by providing a fake phone number and address, and even changing his company's name.
Past Conviction and Potential Flight Risk
This is not Luke's first encounter with the justice system for fraudulent activities. A court memorandum details a prior conviction in Maryland in 2009 for conspiracy to commit identification document fraud and aggravated identity theft.
In that case, he stole the identity of a patient suffering from a traumatic brain injury and used it to submit a fraudulent US passport application in Pennsylvania. He also submitted a second application using his son's identity for an unknown third party. For these crimes, he served 37 months in prison and had his Maryland state pharmacy licence revoked.
Prosecutors expressed concern that Luke, who owns substantial property in Nigeria including 80 plots of land in Lagos, was a flight risk due to this past conviction. Following his arrest, authorities seized both his US and Nigerian passports. Court papers note he lives in a $620,000 house in Stockton, California.
It is alleged that he siphoned at least $1.6 million of the fraudulently obtained funds to offshore accounts in Asia and Africa. If convicted on the latest charges, Luke faces a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000.
