ATTORNEY GENERAL Andrea Campbell’s office has recovered almost $12 million from a string of settlements with Massachusetts medical transportation companies it accuses of defrauding MassHealth, the state Medicaid program – and it’s got more in sight.
For those on Medicaid, coverage will pay for non-emergency medical transportation, either through certain state-approved providers or reimbursement. Companies that bill for services they never provide can find themselves in prosecutors’ crosshairs.
The latest defendant is fighting the fraud charges. But he’s also blaming any errors on years of shoddy recordkeeping on the part of brokers and vendors that handle scheduling, patient records, and billing for the state’s Medicaid-covered rides.
Worcester resident Ardit Islamaj and his company, Instant Transportation, LLC, were indicted last year on 17 counts. They are accused of billing MassHealth more than $3 million for rides that never happened — to patients who were dead, hospitalized, or had canceled rides — between August 2018 and August 2023. Prosecutors also allege patient abuse and neglect, identity fraud, and witness intimidation.
“The attorney general’s office conducted a one-dimensional investigation and simply got this one wrong,” said Islamaj’s lawyer, Amy Crafts. “We will continue pushing to dismiss these charges and clear his name.”
Islamaj’s lawyers argue the company can’t properly defend itself because Coordinated Transportation Solutions — the vendor that scheduled and billed Instant Transportation’s rides — won’t hand over records they say would let them prove that some of the bills they submitted were either legitimate or honest mistakes. Separately, Islamaj has accused CTS of feeding prosecutors curated information to help build the case against him.
CTS is a Connecticut-based nonprofit that administers non-emergency rides for some MassHealth members. It told the court that it has already provided the attorney general’s office with all documents relevant to scheduling, patient information, and billing information for the defendants’ services to MassHealth clients.
Worcester Superior Court Judge James Gavin Reardon, Jr. wasn’t persuaded that even potential gaps in CTS’s files help Islamaj’s case.
“The defendants have provided no facts indicating that CTS is in possession of, or has withheld, potentially exculpatory evidence,” Reardon wrote in his May 21 order.
He noted prosecutors have said they’ll rely only on specific bills, trips, and patients — not on anything CTS might be missing.
The case is due back in Worcester Superior Court for a motion hearing September 16.
Islamaj’s case is one of seven the attorney general has pursued against Massachusetts transportation companies in the last few years. Roughly $11.6 million has been recovered through settlements.
“MassHealth serves millions of residents, and every dollar improperly billed is a dollar that cannot go toward legitimate health care,” a spokesperson for Campbell said in a statement. “The AG’s office will continue to vigorously pursue these cases to protect the integrity of our public programs, both with respect to patient safety and to ensure taxpayer dollars are appropriately spent.”
Islamaj is one of two current indictments, according to the AG’s office. Waltham operator Bakali Mukasa was indicted in February for billing $770,000 for almost 17,000 rides to methadone clinics that the indictment alleges were never provided, with the proceeds allegedly funneled to Uganda, where he now lives.
Last August, Weymouth’s Brewster Ambulance and EasCare — the state’s largest medical transportation provider — paid $6 million over inflated claims.
In July, Traveler’s Transit paid $1.045 million to settle charges on routes it never drove. Two North Dartmouth ambulance companies paid $1.6 million in February 2024 for billing more expensive services than the ones provided. Leominster’s MedStar Ambulance paid $2.6 million in August 2023 for similar false billing. In October 2024, Swampscott’s RM Transportation paid $380,000 for billing rides for MassHealth recipients with take-home methadone doses who had no reason to travel that day — roughly the same behavior for which a grand jury indicted Mukasa.
Most of the cases have targeted the companies that provided the rides, not the brokers or vendors responsible for verifying the bills. But in 2020, under then-Attorney General Maura Healey, the AG’s office and the US Department of Justice settled with the Montachusett Regional Transit Authority (MART) for $300,000, resolving allegations that the organization billed for and received reimbursement from MassHealth for thousands of rides between 2011 and 2015 that its transportation subcontractors did not provide.
A May 2025 audit by the state auditor’s office examined the $283 million in MassHealth business paid to MART and the Greater Attleboro Taunton Regional Transit Authority. The office found the state had paid for rides with no matching medical appointment on record, and for rides without adequate documentation.
“Without sufficient evidence of trips, MassHealth may be paying for transportation services that did not take place,” auditors wrote.
The Executive Office of Health and Human Services responded that brokers are now rolling out software to centralize trip logs and driver records. Some cases without documentation, the health office said, may reflect circumstances where the member did receive the medical service but it was not properly logged or documented.
That audit did not cover the transportation broker CTS, the Connecticut nonprofit at the center of Islamaj’s argument. No state audit or attorney general settlement has yet examined whether the recordkeeping there passes muster.
But Crafts, Islamaj’s attorney, says years of poor documentation by transportation brokers should cut in his favor.
“Both the [attorney general’s] prior settlement with a transportation broker and the auditor’s recent report made clear that brokers like CTS are not properly documenting contracted rides, and they are now out to scapegoat my client,” Crafts said.
