Nearly a dozen Long Island medical firms and physicians were named in a sprawling federal racketeering lawsuit alleging they conspired with other physicians, lawyers and financiers to provide unnecessary surgeries on construction workers who staged fake accidents across the city dating back to 2018.

The suit, filed June 16 in New York's Eastern District in Brooklyn on behalf of two insurance providers, details a "widespread fraud scheme" to take advantage of the state’s so-called "Scaffold Law." The 140-year-old law, which is exclusive to New York, places the blame squarely on property owners and contractors in the event of construction site falls.

The lawsuit, the latest to pull back the curtain on the lucrative industry behind allegedly staged accidents across New York, argues that construction workers — typically new immigrants — conspired to file bogus lawsuits and workers' compensation claims after pretending to be injured on job sites following unwitnessed falls from scaffolds or ladders. The suits can result in seven and eight figure payouts from insurance companies and the state.

None of the defendants named in the suit have been criminally charged.

Ten of the medical defendants operated from the same Ditmas Avenue address in Brooklyn and would often refer patients to one another, the suit contends,

"This yet again shows the connected practices that are behind this pipeline," said Dan Johnston, a Melville-based attorney representing the insurance providers. "And it’s the same people that are benefiting each time."

The lawsuit named more than 40 defendants, predominantly medical providers, including at least five companies and six doctors with ties to Long Island.

They include Total Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, with four locations in Nassau; Dr. Vadim Lerman, the business’ associate director of spine surgery and Dr. Abhishek Kumar, an orthopedic surgeon with the practice. Total Orthopedics was named in a similar suit in April filed by the same law firm, the Texas-based Willis Law Group.

"This latest lawsuit represents a recycled version of the same baseless claims against us that have previously been advanced by the same insurance company and its affiliate, all of whom are represented by the same law firm," Total Orthopedics said in a statement. "The hope and goal of such litigants and their attorneys is that repetition of the same falsehoods will somehow be misperceived as legitimate grievances against us. Total Orthopedics and Sports Medicine looks forward to vigorously refuting these spurious allegations in the appropriate legal forum."

The suit contends Lerman and Kumar performed back and neck surgeries that were "unnecessary, excessive, and/or unwarranted and were not causally related to the alleged workplace accident."

In one case, Lerman recommended an "invasive surgery" following minimal physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic care and three epidural injections shortly after the alleged accident, the suit alleges.

Newsday reported this month that the State Workers’ Compensation Board rejected the renewal of Lerman’s application allowing him to seek reimbursement for the treatment of injured workers, accusing him of "billing irregularities," inadequate medical record-keeping and performing "highly invasive" surgeries without medical justification.

The top leadership at Total Orthopedics also operate the Orthopedics Department at Nassau University Medical Center, the cash-strapped public hospital whose oversight board was recently taken over by the state.

Among the other Long Island firms named in the suit were:

The suit contends that attorneys with Manhattan-based William Schwitzer & Associates directed individuals, commonly known as runners, to recruit construction workers to stage accidents at various locations across the region and to claim a host of injuries from the supposed fall. The suit names the firm, its founder, William Schwitzer, and John Merlino, a longtime partner in the firm.

"Claimants were told that they would be paid workers’ compensation benefits for not working if they had a workplace injury and that they would receive money in addition to workers’ compensation benefits in order to cover any theoretical gap in pay, in the form of litigation funding loans arranged by Schwitzer defendants," the suit states.

In a statement, Missy Stewart, a spokeswoman for the State Workers' Compensation Board said the agency "remains steadfast in our commitment to upholding the integrity of the workers’ compensation system and take all allegations of fraud and abuse seriously. As such, we impose consequences on any provider who is determined to have acted improperly."

John Carman, a Garden City attorney representing William Schwitzer & Associates and their attorneys in the case, said the lawsuit "is one of several filed by insurance companies that are abusing the Civil Rico statute in order to avoid financial responsibility for claims that they are required to pay. We are confident that the court will look unfavorably upon it, as it has on identical suits that preceded it."

Data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau shows that New York City is the number one location in the country for questionable slip and fall claims.

Officially known as New York Labor Law 240(1), the Scaffold Law holds commercial property owners, employers and contractors fully liable for accidents on construction sites, including falls or objects dropping from high places that injure workers. Workers aren't required to prove in a lawsuit that contractors or property owners were negligent — only that they sustained an injury involving "gravity."

A key stumbling block toward curbing the issue, according to officials representing the insurance industry, is that anyone allegedly caught staging an accident is faced with a class A misdemeanor, an offense punishable by at most a year in jail.

Legislative proposals under consideration in Albany would allow prosecutors to charge people who stage accidents with a felony.