A former Amtrak employee from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, was sentenced on October 7 to 20 months in prison for his role in a health care fraud and extortion scheme that bilked the railroad's employee health plan out of millions of dollars. Devon Burt, 53, was also ordered to pay $959,072 in restitution and will serve two years of supervised release once he's out.
A Scheme Built on Kickbacks and Stolen Insurance Info
According to Trains Magazine, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey announced the sentencing after Burt pleaded guilty in June 2023 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to communicate extortionate threats. Burt worked with health care providers to recruit fellow Amtrak employees into the scheme, offering cash in exchange for letting providers use their insurance information to submit false claims for services that were never performed or were medically unnecessary. Federal court charging documents show Burt personally pocketed $181,128.88 in cash kickbacks, both for using his own family's insurance details and for recruiting other rail workers, according to the U.S. District Court District of New Jersey.
The extortion piece of Burt's case turned violent, at least in its threats. Court filings detailing the charge show Burt and co-conspirator Hallum Gelzer threatened a Florida-based medical provider between April and June 2022 with physical harm unless Gelzer was paid several thousand dollars in disputed kickbacks, as reported by Daily Voice. During one phone call, Gelzer falsely claimed an angry patient with a gun was searching for the provider, according to the same outlet. Burt and the conspirator communicated the threats by phone calls and text messages, warning the provider would be injured if the money wasn't paid.
119 Employees, Seven States, One Conspiracy
Burt's case is just one thread in a much larger investigation. A May 2025 report by the Amtrak Office of Inspector General found that at least 119 current and former Amtrak employees across seven states and Washington, D.C., participated in the fraud conspiracy between 2019 and 2022. Inspector General Kevin H. Winters noted that the criminal behavior had become troubling and normalized within the region's workforce, per the inspector general's findings.
The financial toll was steep. Amtrak's employee health care plan was billed more than $16 million and paid out over $12 million in fraudulent or medically unnecessary claims during that period, the inspector general's office found. Corrupt providers paid cash kickbacks to rail workers and their dependents in exchange for access to their insurance billing credentials, fueling claims that piled up undetected for years.
Medical Providers Behind the Payouts Face Their Own Reckonings
Two corrupt providers at the center of the scheme have already been sentenced. New Jersey physician Dr. Muhammad Mirza, who operated offices across New York and New Jersey, was sentenced in May 2024 to 26 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.37 million in restitution for billing Amtrak's plan for services that were never rendered, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey. New York acupuncturist Punson “Susie” Figueroa was sentenced that September to 34 months in prison and ordered to pay $9.05 million in restitution for orchestrating more than $9 million in fraudulent payouts; an undercover federal agent caught her having him sign 30 undated service logs during a 2021 sting. The following year, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General formally barred both Mirza and Figueroa from participating in any federal health care program, a step beyond their prison terms that blocks them from billing Medicare, Medicaid, or federal employee benefit plans.
The fallout inside Amtrak has reached well beyond the criminal courts. The inspector general's investigation prompted 28 implicated employees to retire or resign, another 30 to leave for other reasons, and 61 active workers to be referred for administrative discipline. Amtrak has said it instituted new fraud controls and took administrative action against active participants still on the payroll.
Last of a Dozen Co-Defendants Resolves His Case
Burt's sentencing follows a long string of resolutions among the employees charged in the core multi-defendant indictment. Former Amtrak employee Timothy Bogen was sentenced in June 2026 to two years of probation and $242,559 in restitution, becoming the last of 12 employees charged under that indictment to resolve his case, per the inspector general's office. Four of the 12 received probation while others faced prison time. In total, the broader fraud investigation has resulted in the prosecution of 19 people, all of whom pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud, Trains Magazine reported.
The pattern isn't confined to Amtrak. In August, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority train operator was sentenced to 24 months for organizing a similar employee ring that submitted fabricated injury claims to insurer AFLAC. Rail watchdogs have warned that supplemental health plan billing across Mid-Atlantic transit systems remains vulnerable to the kind of organized fraud that took years to unravel at Amtrak.
