GEICO is suing to claw back more than $1.9 million it says it paid a New York medical supplier for braces injured drivers never needed.
The insurer sued Pretoria Medical Supply Inc. and its owner, Yevgeniy Ovsyannikov, on June 15, 2026, in the Eastern District of New York, alleging a no-fault fraud scheme that has run since September 2023.
The case is a useful map of how no-fault equipment fraud is alleged to work. New York gives each injured driver up to $50,000 in benefits for necessary care, including durable medical equipment. GEICO claims Pretoria Supply drained that pool by billing for gear nobody needed - mostly lumbar, knee and wrist braces and cervical traction units, which the filing labels the "Fraudulent Equipment." GEICO says it was billed more than $2.9 million in all.
The how is what should interest claims teams. GEICO says Ovsyannikov skipped normal marketing and instead cut "collusive arrangements" with clinic operators, paying "kickbacks and other financial incentives" for a stream of prescriptions sent straight to his company rather than to patients - keeping them away from any retailer who might ask questions.
Those prescriptions, the complaint says, followed "predetermined fraudulent protocols": near-identical equipment lists given to patients no matter their age, injury or crash, most of them minor "fender-bender" accidents. The filing alleges some prescriptions bore photocopied signatures, and that two nurse practitioners whose names appeared on them "each stated that they did not issue or authorize" them. Neither is a defendant in the case.
Then there's a billing tactic worth flagging. GEICO says prescriptions used "generic, vague, non-descript" wording - say, an "LSO Brace." That one phrase, according to the filing, maps to more than 20 billing codes paying anywhere from $43.27 to $1,150.00. GEICO alleges the company, which it says had no licensed provider on staff, picked lucrative codes itself - typically billing $556.19 for a lumbar brace, $514.93 for a "TLSO Brace," $402.08 for a "Knee Brace," and $250.02 for a "Wrist Brace."
The forms behind it all, the NF-3 and HCFA-1500, each carry a warning that filing false claims "is a crime." GEICO says those forms falsely certified the equipment as necessary and properly prescribed.
The insurer also says the defendants used the collection system as cover, filing many small, separate proceedings that are hard for any one arbitrator to recognize as a single scheme.
GEICO brings six counts, including two under RICO, and seeks triple damages plus a ruling that it owes nothing on more than $725,000 in pending claims. The complaint notes Ovsyannikov "was previously sued by GEICO in 2021" over similar equipment billing.
None of the allegations has been tested in court. The defendants have not responded, and no judge has ruled.
