Enrico Rubano, Shivam Maharaj Copped to $3.4M Fund Rip-Off

Enrico Rubano, 48, of Tappan, New York, and Shivanand Maharaj, 36, of Cresskill, New Jersey, are behind bars after being nailed in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that bled $3.4 million from health and retirement funds. Federal prosecutors say the duo ran a rigged billing mill for six years, flooding the Funds with fake invoices for IT work never done—all rubber-stamped by Rubano, the very man sworn to protect the books.

Rubano, co-head of information technology for the Funds from 2008 to 2015, allegedly used his authority to greenlight hundreds of fraudulent payments to companies tied to Maharaj and other co-conspirators. None of the services billed were performed—or had already been handled in-house or by legitimate vendors. Instead, the cash flowed straight into their pockets, with Rubano collecting kickbacks for every phony invoice he approved.

The scheme, which ran from 2009 through October 2015, relied on betrayal from within. As a top IT official, Rubano had unchecked power to approve vendor payments. Prosecutors say he turned that trust into a pipeline, allowing Maharaj’s shell companies to cash in on ghost projects while real fund beneficiaries—workers counting on health and retirement support—got shortchanged.

Arrested this morning in coordinated raids across New York and New Jersey, both men now face two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. They’re scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck in Manhattan federal court, where the weight of the allegations will begin to unfold.

“As alleged, Enrico Rubano used his position as the co-head of IT for a health and retirement benefit fund to perpetrate a scheme to falsely invoice millions of dollars from the fund for consulting work never actually performed,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “Money that should have gone to help pay retirement and health care benefits were instead allegedly diverted to Rubano and Maharaj.”

Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, emphasized that the use of the U.S. mail to transmit invoices sealed the defendants’ fate: “They went one step too far when they decided to use the US Mail to facilitate their criminal misdeeds.” The investigation, led by USPIS and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Podolsky and Jacob Warren, remains ongoing. The charges are pending; the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.