Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed a nine-count indictment charging four men connected to a Bronx-based operation known as the War Room with running a $12 million Medicaid fraud scheme that prosecutors say also involved narcotics distribution, firearms offenses, and an armed home invasion robbery in New Jersey. Louis Trejo, known as Machete, Kenneth Garner, known as KG, Harold Stevenson, known as Bazz, and Erihk Belis, known as Eddie, face charges including racketeering conspiracy, healthcare fraud, Anti-Kickback violations, narcotics distribution, and money laundering.
According to the US Attorney SDNY, the indictment was unsealed by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and resulted from a multi-agency federal and state investigation. Court filings cited by the U.S. Department of Justice allege the ring operated from 2023 through 2025 by recruiting Medicaid patients at methadone clinics in the Bronx and Manhattan. Members allegedly used smartphones equipped with GPS spoofing software to log non-existent rides, then paid patients kickbacks in cash and drugs to keep the fraudulent billing flowing.
Methadone patients made convenient targets, prosecutors say, because they are required to visit clinics daily, giving the scheme a built-in, repeatable revenue stream through fake non-emergency medical transportation claims.
A Charity Facade With a CEO and an Org Chart
The Justice Department says the enterprise concealed its racketeering operation behind a front charity called The Forward Foundation, complete with a whiteboard organizational chart federal agents seized inside Trejo's residence. That chart, laid out like a corporate structure, designated Trejo as CEO, listed as “Lou,” Garner as COO under the initials “KG,” Belis as Vice President, and Stevenson as outreach manager, or “Bazz.” Per the seed post from the U.S. Attorney's office, the foundation's structure also included board members, an executive director, an administration assistant, and separate outreach and transportation departments — a corporate veneer prosecutors say masked the illegal operation underneath.
US Attorney SDNY quoted an official statement crediting the case to a broad crackdown, and Assistant Attorney General Jamie McDonald said, according to the same post, that authorities “will relentlessly pursue people who defraud federal benefit programs and endanger communities through drugs and violence.” Officials also said the arrests “dismantled the War Room's racketeering operation.”
Territorial Dispute Escalated Into Armed Robbery
The case did not stay confined to fraudulent billing. To protect and expand their illicit transportation territory, members of the War Room allegedly orchestrated an armed home invasion robbery on January 12, 2024, targeting the leader of a rival Medicaid fraud ring at a residence in Teaneck, New Jersey, according to the Justice Department. Teaneck police originally responded to that home invasion, according to the same federal account, illustrating how the billing scheme's rivalries spilled into violent confrontation between competing fraud operations.
Three In Custody, One Still At Large
Federal law enforcement officers arrested Trejo, Garner, and Belis Thursday morning ahead of their arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger. Stevenson remained at large as of the announcement. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, the Justice Department said.
Racketeering conspiracy under federal law carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison, while carrying or brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime mandates consecutive prison terms on top of any other sentence, per the Justice Department's outline of the charges. It remains an open question whether additional transportation intermediaries or methadone clinic staff knowingly helped facilitate the fake ride entries, and whether federal agents will locate Stevenson.
Part of a Broader Crackdown on Transportation Fraud
The indictment lands amid an intensifying statewide and federal push against non-emergency medical transportation fraud in New York. In June 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James recovered over $13 million from 16 non-emergency medical transportation companies, including a $4.8 million settlement with Bronx-based American Base No. 1 over inflated vehicle trip mileages.
The vulnerability isn't new. A September 2022 federal audit by the HHS Office of Inspector General found that New York submitted $196 million in federal Medicaid reimbursement claims for New York City medical transportation providers that failed or may have failed to meet federal program rules. A more recent February 2026 report from the Paragon Health Institute named non-emergency medical transportation as one of four Medicaid service sectors nationwide most vulnerable to systematic improper payments, noting the sector's decentralized logging can be manipulated by bad actors.
Federal attention on this type of fraud has grown sharply in 2026. In March, the federal government established a national Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance, expanding oversight after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services set up a dedicated Medicaid Fraud War Room to analyze billing anomalies, according to the Paragon Health Institute's reporting on the initiative. The Bronx case joins a string of recent Medicaid fraud prosecutions in the region, including a Brooklyn med supply case and a couple accused of billing $9.3 million for phantom care.
