One Square Mile in Queens Has 64 “Adult Daycares” Billing Medicaid Billions — Federal Prosecutors Say Millions of It Was Never Earned.
Flushing, Queens packs more Medicaid-funded “social adult day care” centers into one square mile than anywhere else in the country — 64 of them, per a CBS News analysis of federal billing data. Nationally, these centers collected $3,350,000,000 from Medicaid in 2024; New York took 17% of that, more than any other state.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and independent journalist Nick Shirley spent July confronting the operators on camera in a video RealClearInvestigations covered under the headline “Billions for Senior Adult Daycare in Queens.” Federal prosecutors have already charged or convicted people behind $226,000,000 in related fraud across three separate cases. New York’s own state Comptroller found $285,000,000 more in questionable payments — using an audit his own Democratic administration’s Department of Health is still fighting.
Every level of accountability — Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), Attorney General Letitia James (D), and now Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) — sits directly above a program regulators, prosecutors, and Albany’s own auditor all say has been bled for years.
- 64 centers, 1 mile — social adult day cares packed into Flushing, Queens — the densest cluster in the country, per CBS News
- $120,000,000 — Medicare/Medicaid fraud charged against two Queens men who ran Royal Adult Daycare and Happy Life — DOJ, Feb. 2026
- $68,000,000 — fraud scheme two Brooklyn day-care operators have pleaded guilty to — E.D.N.Y., leader forfeited $5 million
- $285,000,000 — questionable Medicaid payments to social adult day cares statewide, found by NY Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's Feb. 2026 audit
- 390% vs. 20% — growth in seniors billed by Flushing day cares (2018–2024) versus growth in the actual senior population, per CBS News
“Social adult day care” is a real Medicaid benefit, meant to give homebound seniors a supervised place to socialize, eat, and get modest health monitoring during the day. In Flushing, it has become something else. CBS News found 64 Medicaid-funded SADCs inside a single one-mile radius — and those centers now bill for the equivalent of more than 90% of all Medicaid-eligible seniors living in the neighborhood.
The growth curve is the tell. From 2018 to 2024, Flushing’s actual Medicaid-eligible senior population grew about 20% — roughly in line with the rest of the country. Over that same span, the number of seniors its day cares billed for jumped 390%. Statewide, New York’s 375 licensed SADCs pulled in roughly $569,500,000 of Medicaid’s $3,350,000,000 national 2024 total for the benefit — a bigger share than any other state, on spending that nearly quadrupled in six years.
On July 10, 2026, independent journalist Nick Shirley — working alongside CMS Administrator Dr. Oz — published a 53-minute investigation walking Flushing storefront by storefront. At one center, Shirley confronted an employee with the facility’s own public CMS billing record.
“This public document says you have 7,899 members. So you're overbilling then? You're getting paid $1,600 per patient — that's how you got $12.9 million in 2024.”
Nick Shirley · to a Flushing social adult day care employee, July 10, 2026
Shirley’s team tallied over $190,000,000 in suspicious billing across the day cares and pharmacies he visited — his own figure, not a court or audit finding. Oz went further on X, calling Flushing “an epicenter for one of the biggest fraud rings you’ve never heard of” and putting Queens’ social adult day cares’ three-year haul at $2,100,000,000.
FLUSHING, QUEENS, NYC — an epicenter for one of the biggest fraud rings you've never heard of: Social adult daycares. In Queens, NY alone, social adult daycares generate $2.1 BILLION. @nickshirleyy and I investigated, and the War on Fraud continues. Stay tuned.
Shirley and Oz’s video followed, and built on, real prosecutions. In February 2026, DOJ charged Inwoo Kim, 42, and Daniel Lee, 56, both of Flushing, with running a $120,000,000 scheme through a pharmacy and two day cares — Royal Adult Daycare and Happy Life — operated under Z & W Empire Enterprise, Inc. Text messages cited in the complaint show Kim directing kickbacks: “Please give the $10,000 to the Korean members first.” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said the pair “turned a pharmacy and social adult day care centers meant to help senior citizens into a $120 million Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme.” Kim and Lee are presumed innocent pending trial.
In Brooklyn, eight people were charged in a separate $68,000,000 scheme running two other social adult day cares. Owner Zakia Khan has pleaded guilty to leading it and agreed to forfeit $5,000,000 in cash, gold, and property; marketers Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao have also pleaded guilty to running the recruitment side, paying seniors kickbacks to enroll in services never rendered.
A third case adds a political thread. Pharmacist Pervez Siddiqui, a Brooklyn Community Board member, was arrested with seven co-conspirators over an alleged $38,000,000 scheme run through APNA Adult Daycare and Ashiana Social Adult Daycare. The day after federal agents raided his center, Siddiqui attended a fundraiser for Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) at the Long Island home of Ijaz Ahmad, a major Mamdani and Hochul donor who, the New York Post reported, personally advises both Siddiqui and Khan on setting up Medicaid-funded facilities. Ahmad has not been accused of wrongdoing.
The criminal cases sit on top of a broader oversight failure Albany documented itself. Democratic state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office audited Medicaid’s managed long-term care oversight of SADCs and found $285,000,000 in payments to day cares after they’d been terminated from a network — including $28,500,000 to a single provider terminated for cause. One Flushing facility, certified for 323 people, billed for 530 participants in a single day. Of 15 member files auditors sampled, 14 had incomplete or noncompliant care assessments.
“Without stronger oversight from the Department of Health, we risk both the well-being of these individuals and the misuse of taxpayer dollars,” DiNapoli said. Hochul’s Health Commissioner, Dr. James McDonald, pushed back, calling New York’s program integrity system “among the strongest… in the nation.” That exchange lands weeks after a separate federal review stripped New York’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of its federal funding over what regulators called years of the lowest fraud-prosecution output of any large state’s unit — a decision AG Letitia James (D) has called politically motivated.
Vice President JD Vance is now in charge of 'FRAUD' in the United States. We will call him the 'FRAUD CZAR,' and his focus will be 'EVERYWHERE,' but primarily in those Blue States where CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS, like those in California, Illinois, Minnesota (Somalia beware!), Maine, New York, and many others, have had a 'free for all' in the unprecedented theft of Taxpayer Money.
Posted April 3, 2026 — naming New York among the states VP Vance's anti-fraud push would target months before the Flushing SADC cases and the DiNapoli audit made headlines.
On March 4, 2026, Oz sent Governor Hochul a letter with 50 questions about New York’s roughly $100,000,000,000 Medicaid program, giving her 30 days to produce a corrective-action plan or face payment deferrals. New York spends about $12,500 per Medicaid beneficiary — 36% above the national average, per CMS figures cited in Oz’s letter. A Hochul spokesperson called the probe “politically motivated” and said the governor was already leading efforts to root out waste before Trump returned to office.
In fairness to that pushback: the Associated Press later found the administration overstated one number in that same letter, claiming roughly 5 million New Yorkers used personal-care services when the real figure was about 450,000. That error concerns a different Medicaid stream than social adult day care and doesn’t touch the DOJ cases, the CBS billing analysis, or DiNapoli’s own audit — all independently documented. VP JD Vance (R) credited Shirley directly for the Queens findings that do hold up.
Our administration owes a debt of gratitude to Nick Shirley for exposing one of the most egregious cases of fraud this country has ever seen. If the media was worth their salt, they would take notes from Nick and other citizen journalists who care about investigating stories that affect the American people instead of trying to silence them.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) — received Oz’s 50-question letter; spokesperson called the probe politically motivated; oversees the Department of Health that regulates SADCs.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) — NYC’s mayor since January 2026; attended a fundraiser one day after a raid on an accused SADC operator’s center, hosted by a donor who advises accused and convicted operators.
AG Letitia James (D) — her office’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit lost federal funding over low enforcement output; calls that decision political.
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli (D) — his own audit found $285 million in questionable SADC payments statewide.
Dr. Mehmet Oz — CMS Administrator; publicized the Queens findings and demanded Hochul’s corrective-action plan.
Inwoo Kim, Daniel Lee, Pervez Siddiqui — charged, presumed innocent. Zakia Khan, Manal Wasef, Elaine Antao — pleaded guilty.
A single square mile of Queens now holds 64 Medicaid-funded day cares, billing for more seniors than plausibly exist to serve — and three separate federal cases plus New York’s own state Comptroller have put dollar figures on what that’s cost taxpayers. The officials responsible for catching it — Governor Hochul, Attorney General James, and now Mayor Mamdani, all Democrats — are contesting the federal spotlight instead of racing to match Albany’s own auditor’s urgency.
