The U.S. has announced the arrest of one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted fraudsters, Khalid Satary, over his alleged involvement in an elaborate Medicare fraud scheme that authorities said defrauded the programme of more than $500 million over a three-year period.

The Justice Department stated in a press release on Tuesday that the 54-year-old man was captured, seven years after he was first charged with several counts of fraud and money laundering but was subsequently released on bond.

Authorities alleged that Mr Satary’s scheme involved the operation of several diagnostic testing laboratories that he owned across the United States, through which he submitted Medicare bills for “expensive and medically unnecessary genetic testing” between 2016 and 2019.

The suspect also allegedly colluded with dozens of patient recruiters, telemarketing call centres, and telemedicine companies to deploy fake marketing campaigns, illegal kickbacks and bribes to generate cancer genetic test samples that reimbursed between $10,000 and $20,000 per sample.

In total, the government alleged that Mr Satary submitted Medicare bills totalling $547 million within three years, while spending millions of dollars to bribe doctors and patient recruiters for their contributions to the scheme at the time. Following his indictment, 16 account numbers belonging to Mr Satary were confiscated, as well as his real estate.

Despite the fact that part of the conditions for Mr Satary’s initial bail release was that he must not work in the health care field, he proceeded to conspire with more laboratories in Texas to continue his scheme, prompting an arrest warrant to be issued against him in December 2022.

Officials, however, noted that the suspect was later found to have fled the country after failing to appear at a court hearing and had been on the run until Monday, when authorities in the Middle East arrested him. He was said to have been under a fake Mexican identity.

He made his first court appearance on Tuesday.

Mr Satary is charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, health care fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, payment and receiving illegal health care kickbacks and bribes, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering.