New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s chief of staff has been issued a subpoena for documents related to a $4.5 million insurance fraud lawsuit filed by GEICO.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, GEICO alleged that a number of doctors and clinics in both New York and New Jersey submitted “thousands of fraudulent no-fault insurance charges” related to motor vehicle accidents.
The mayor’s aide, Frank Carone, is not a defendant in the lawsuit nor was he accused of any misconduct. But as a former law partner at Abrams Fensterman, GEICO’s attorneys alleged that Carone and his former law partners Howard and Jordan Fensterman held considerable ownership stakes in four funding companies that lent money to the medical clinics involved in the fraud scheme. Carone and his partners were purportedly paid back with interest after the clinics were paid by GEICO, the insurer claimed.
GEICO’s attorneys filed a motion for a subpoena on December 10, 2021, requesting Carone and his former partners turn over any communications they had with the defendants, but the mayor’s aide and the partners said that the information is protected by attorney-client privilege. To support the motion, the insurer provided bank records of transfers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars between Fensterman and the advance funding companies, as well as incorporation documents that showed Carone and the Fenstermans’ ownership interest in those entities.
Bloomberg reported that on January 10, the court denied GEICO’s blanket subpoena, requesting the insurer to submit a more specific request for information.
