The manager of a taxi company, aged 60, was indicted for fraud and money laundering at the end of last week in Versailles (Yvelines), before being imprisoned in the Bois-d'Arcy penitentiary center, according to information from Parisian.
Based in Élancourt, the individual is suspected of having overcharged for patient transports in Île-de-France, between 2021 and 2024, receiving, according to the first elements of the investigation, more than 1.7 million euros per the primary health insurance fund (CPAM 78) and various mutual insurance companies. He also allegedly wrote false declarations, charging himself for patient trips that were never made.
First report from Tracfin
The investigation was opened at the end of November 2023 after the Versailles public prosecutor's office received a report from the banking transaction policeman (Tracfin), responsible for the fight against money laundering or tax and social fraud, about this company. transport. Contracted by the Ministry of Health, its main activity was to transport patients to hospitals for their consultations.
Of Cameroonian origin, a country where he had gone for a few months, it was on his return to France on January 7 that he was apprehended by the forces of the Order. He then admitted to having defrauded 19 primary funds, for a total loss of 2.4 million euros, even more than what the investigators had detected.
Almost all of the company's funds were allegedly transferred to the sixty-year-old's various personal accounts, including some in Bulgaria, Estonia or Malta, and to a cryptocurrency wallet. Before the investigating judge, the individual admitted the facts, expressed regret and said he was ready to repay everything.
Not an isolated affair
This case of Social Security fraud by a medical carrier is far from isolated. Last October, a taxi driver from Allier was sentenced to repay his primary fund of nearly 100,000 euros and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence, in addition to the confiscation of one of his luxury vehicles. The same month, a Var taxi driver was accused of having received more than 2.3 million euros for medical transport from various primary and mutual funds – including one million for a single patient… She will appear before the Draguignan criminal court in February.
The director of Cnam, Thomas Fâtome, estimated that health transporters represented, in 2023, a total amount of 34 million euros in damage detected in terms of Health Insurance fraud, calling for more “controls”.
Reduced fares and shared transport?
Beyond proven, minority fraud, the question of regulating health transport expenses has returned to the debate in recent weeks, thanks to negotiations between the Cnam and taxi artisans. At the end of November, taxi drivers mobilized strongly to refuse the proposed 2025-2029 agreement with Health Insurance, arguing that it would cause them to lose up to 40% of their annual turnover! This was initially supposed to come into force in 2025 and lower the agreed rates for medical transport of people by taxis, in order to be able to reduce the bill for Social Security.
Around 40,000 taxis participate in medical transport. “We are not at the end of the discussions”however tempered Thomas Fatôme, CEO of Cnam, on December 2, on Franceinfo. With the censorship and rejection of the 2025 Social Security budget (which hoped for 300 million euros in savings on these medical transports), the 2024 convention is for now “extended”, awaiting future arbitrations.
In addition, a decree implementing the Social Security 2024 budget provides that a patient can no longer refuse, except in exceptional circumstances, shared medical transport, under penalty of having to advance the costs and being reimbursed only on the basis of the shared transportation. To this end, the Cnam launched a campaign at the end of the year to encourage users to use shared medical transport, after having already made proposals in its “costs and products” report for 2025.
Medical transport represents a budget of 6.3 billion euros, increasing by almost 9% between 2022 and 2023, and growing on average by 4.4% per year since 2016.
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