Daniel Pinna
FBI grabs ex-Boca fugitive after TV viewer provides tip
Sheldon Weinberg and his wife, Roslyn, once enjoyed a $2.5 million lakefront home in Boca Raton, yachts, custom cars and an $18,000-a-month apartment in the Trump Tower in New York.
But by the time federal agents caught up with them on Thursday, the couple had assumed a less flashy lifestyle, living under false names in a garden apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The FBI was able to track Sheldon Weinberg, convicted of the largest Medicaid fraud in history, after he was portrayed on Wednesday on a national television program, Unsolved Mysteries.
Weinberg, 64, and his two sons were convicted on Nov. 30, 1988 of stealing more than $16 million from Medicaid between 1980 and 1987. Sheldon Weinberg was to have been sentenced in January, when he and his wife fled. They were living under the names Mark and Anna Divita when the FBI found them in Scottsdale.
During the trial, prosecutors said he and his sons filed for an estimated 400,000 Medicaid reimbursements, an average of about 12,000 a month, for patient visits that did not occur while the Weinbergs operated a health-care clinic in a low-income area of Brooklyn, N.Y.
They used the profits to acquire their apartment in New York, a fleet of custom cars and the lavishly furnished home in Boca Raton. "It is fitting indeed that ordinary citizens, whose millions of stolen tax dollars directly financed Sheldon Weinberg's obscenely lavish lifestyle...should be the instrument of his ultimate downfall," New York's Deputy Attorney General Edward J. Kuriansky said.
After the Unsolved Mysteries episode portraying Weinberg, hundreds of viewers responded. One caller gave the FBI Weinberg's alias and address.
FBI agents arrived at Weinberg's apartment a few hours after the program aired. Following extradition proceedings in Arizona, Weinberg will be returned to New York to serve a 7-to-21-year prison term.
This report was supplemented with information from the Associated Press and written by Amy DePaul which appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on May 20th 1989
But by the time federal agents caught up with them on Thursday, the couple had assumed a less flashy lifestyle, living under false names in a garden apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The FBI was able to track Sheldon Weinberg, convicted of the largest Medicaid fraud in history, after he was portrayed on Wednesday on a national television program, Unsolved Mysteries.
Weinberg, 64, and his two sons were convicted on Nov. 30, 1988 of stealing more than $16 million from Medicaid between 1980 and 1987. Sheldon Weinberg was to have been sentenced in January, when he and his wife fled. They were living under the names Mark and Anna Divita when the FBI found them in Scottsdale.
During the trial, prosecutors said he and his sons filed for an estimated 400,000 Medicaid reimbursements, an average of about 12,000 a month, for patient visits that did not occur while the Weinbergs operated a health-care clinic in a low-income area of Brooklyn, N.Y.
They used the profits to acquire their apartment in New York, a fleet of custom cars and the lavishly furnished home in Boca Raton. "It is fitting indeed that ordinary citizens, whose millions of stolen tax dollars directly financed Sheldon Weinberg's obscenely lavish lifestyle...should be the instrument of his ultimate downfall," New York's Deputy Attorney General Edward J. Kuriansky said.
After the Unsolved Mysteries episode portraying Weinberg, hundreds of viewers responded. One caller gave the FBI Weinberg's alias and address.
FBI agents arrived at Weinberg's apartment a few hours after the program aired. Following extradition proceedings in Arizona, Weinberg will be returned to New York to serve a 7-to-21-year prison term.
This report was supplemented with information from the Associated Press and written by Amy DePaul which appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on May 20th 1989
Date & Place:
in Florida
Kathy Pinna 
