Before joining Barclay Damon, Chris served for nearly a decade as the New York City regional director for the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) within the Office of the Attorney General, State of New York, where he supervised a staff of over 90 attorneys, detectives, auditors, registered nurses, and other professionals who investigated and prosecuted provider fraud within the New York State Medicaid program as well as patient abuse and neglect in residential care facilities. He was the face of the Attorney General’s Office related to these matters in New York City and was responsible for coordinating investigative efforts with multiple government agencies, including the United States Attorney Offices for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor, the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General (OMIG), and various district attorneys’ offices.
In this role, Chris, individually and with his teams, investigated and prosecuted substance use disorder treatment programs, pharmacies, diagnostic treatment providers, dental practices, home health care agencies, transportation companies, and individual practitioners within a variety of medical fields to name a few. Included among the expansive range of the civil and criminal violations and schemes Chris successfully prosecuted are health care fraud, larceny, kickbacks, fee splitting, upcoding, unbundling, money laundering, false filings, opioid trafficking, and racketeering. While at the MFCU, Chris also co-chaired the MFCU’s statewide Fraud and Abuse Working Group, a team focused on evaluating data algorithms for their predictive value in detecting fraud, waste, and abuse.
Chris, to date, is the only prosecutor in the MFCU’s history to charge and successfully prosecute a health care provider for enterprise corruption (racketeering). Chris twice successfully filed enterprise corruption charges against health care providers: first against a series of interconnected pharmacies that participated in a prescription buyback scheme and recently culminated in the extradition of the owner and lead defendant from Pakistan; and the second against Narco Freedom, a multimillion-dollar not-for-profit substance abuse treatment provider that operated treatment programs and transitional housing and, in so doing, violated patient rights and systematically billed for static treatment plans.
Prior to his role with the Office of the Attorney General, New York State, Chris served as a senior assistant district attorney within the Economic Crimes Bureau of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, where he investigated and prosecuted a wide variety of financial crimes. Prior to joining the Economic Crimes Bureau, Chris was assigned to the Felony Trial Bureau, where he prosecuted and secured trial verdicts against violent felony offenders, drug dealers, and others. Earlier in his career, he was assigned to the Appeals and Special Litigation Bureau, where he handled post-verdict litigation at all levels within the New York State court system, including before the New York State Court of Appeals.
With his in-depth understanding of compliance and litigation in the health care industry and professional relationships forged over decades in law enforcement, Chris focuses his practice on audits, criminal and civil investigations and litigation, and compliance in the health care industry as well as defense of white-collar criminal investigations and government investigations of all types.