NYC adult daycare owners busted in $530K Medicaid fraud in ‘Operation Golden Grift’: DA
Two Staten Island adult daycare operators allegedly bilked Medicaid out of more than half a million dollars by billing for hundreds of seniors they never served — including some who were dead or out of the country, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Yangsim Oum, 79, and her daughter, 49-year-old Juyone Choe — the respective owner and program director of SI Day Care Center, Inc. on Forest Avenue — were arrested Tuesday in an investigation dubbed “Operation Golden Grift” by the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office.
The pair were slapped with a staggering 457-count indictment charging them with pocketing more than $530,000 in bogus billings in just four months from April 17 to August 25.
That eye-watering sum included $13,000 for services supposedly provided to at least 32 seniors who turned out to be dead or overseas at the time, according to prosecutors.
The mother-daughter duo was “one of Staten Island’s most lucrative con artists,” District Attorney Michael McMahon railed at a press conference announcing the indictment.
“All these defendants saw were dollar signs,” he fumed, accusing Oum and Choe of “using and abusing our borough’s seniors as pawns in a vast criminal enterprise.”
Oum and Choe each face up to 15 years behind bars if convicted of the top count, healthcare fraud in the second degree. They also face hundreds of counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
McMahon warned there were “countless” other criminals running similar alleged scams.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “As far as we can tell, countless other adult daycare centers are engaged in similar criminal activities.”
They were just two of the about 100 senior care providers across the city targeted in a sprawling operation Tuesday involving both state, local and federal authorities investigating potential Medicaid fraud.
“The New York State Department of Health and the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General joined state and federal law enforcement agencies in a coordinated crackdown on suspected fraud in the social adult daycare program,” State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said alongside McMahon.
“The investigation targets providers suspected of illegal activities, including money laundering, kickbacks, improper billing and fraudulent activities,” he said.
“These efforts have resulted in more than 100 referrals to the attorney general for investigation and prosecution.”
Agents from Homeland Security Investigations and agencies were seen flooding adult daycare centers in Brooklyn and filling cars with armloads of sealed boxes marked “evidence,” while Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, visited two facilities in Queens.
The raids followed a months-long investigation, which Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday was part of a “massive effort to combat fraud and abuse” on the part of the state and the feds.
Adult daycare centers typically serve seniors who need help because of physical or cognitive decline, and keep the elders fed, safe and occupied during the day if family is unavailable to care for them.
Many of the raided locations — including the one on Staten Island — were legitimately serving customers, and prosecutors noted those seniors were in the process of being connected with responsible businesses.
“We do not want to have more innocent victims of this deception and fraud,” McMahon said. “No members of our community will be displaced or left without critical services they need as a result of yesterday’s takedown.”
Similar fraud schemes have taken center stage in Washington and the headlines in recent years — with attention exploding in 2025 after a Minnesota daycare run by Somali immigrants, infamously called the “Quality Learing Center,” was caught conning the government out of millions in compensation for kids it never cared for.
The Quality Learing Center was largely exposed by an investigative vlogger, and President Trump ramped up his war on fraud schemes Tuesday by offering $30,000 bounties for similar tips leading to indictments.
— Additional reporting by Vaughn Golden