Joseph Merlino created an insurance scheme by collecting insurance payments and bribing doctors to write false prescriptions for medication. Merlino was only one of many that was arrested for loan sharking, extortion, gambling, credit card fraud, and healthcare fraud. These crimes operated in several different states including New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Merlino was the head leader of an operation that surfaced in Pennsylvania in the eighties. It was known that Merlino was targeted because of a hit put out on him for a substantial amount of reward money. Merlino was also considered a suspect after a failed hit on another mob member. He served twelve years in prison before being released in 2011. Now, facing a five-million-dollar
