question: A father and son have appeared in a New York court accused of using their Medicaid-funded, not-for-profit drug-rehab operation to cream off $4 million through an alleged extortion and insurance fraud scheme. Narco Freedom CEO Alan Brand, 64, and his son Jason, 35, are accused of using the cash to fund lavish lifestyles including several large houses and a fleet of luxury cars, according to charges filed on Wednesday. The father and son were led into the Bronx Supreme Court in handcuffs by officers of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose office had carried out the investigation. Narco Freedom CEO Alan Brand, right, and his son Jason, left, are accused of using the cash to fund lavish lifestyles including several large houses and a fleet of luxury cars. According to the indictment, Alan Brand is being charged with insurance fraud, money laundering, bribery, and grand larceny. His son, Jason Brand, faces grand larceny and insurance fraud charges. Both Brands have been charged with filing false documents to obtain a $3.5 million insurance payout for the restoration of a Narco office in Brooklyn, reports the New York Daily News. The remaining $600,000 came from kickbacks Alan Brand collected from the owners of the facility properties, the AG said. Schneiderman's office has frozen the pair's bank accounts and seized assets including two mansions on Long Island, and condos in Boynton Beach and Boca Raton, Florida. This electric yellow 1969 Corvette is one of six luxury cars owned by Alan and Jason Brand that the New York state Attorney General has impounded. Six luxury cars, including an electric yellow 1969 Corvette, an $80,000 Tesla and a 2002 Jaguar X have also been impounded. Both father and son have pleaded not guilty to the insurance fraud charges. They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. The pair are now under investigation for embezzlement of Medicaid funds. 'The people’s investigation has only just started,' Assistant AG Kristen Anne Conklin wrote in seeking bail for the Brands. The father was freed on $225,000 bail and the son was freed on $178,000 bail on Wednesday. Other luxury cars belonging to the Brands which have been seized include this Buick, left, and Hyundai, right. As well as founding his luxury lifestyle, Alan Brand had donated to numerous political campaigns, including $10,000 into Gov. Cuomo’s re-election, $2,300 to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, nearly $30,000 to Bronx pols. He also gave $8,000 to Schneiderman' office, which will now be given to charity. An AG official, who explained that returning them any earlier would have tipped the Brands to the probe. Narco Freedom operates methodone clinics and so-called ‘sober houses’ across the Bronx and receives about $38 million from Medicaid annually, plus has $6.3 million in state contracts.

answer: Narco Freedom CEO Alan Brand, 64, and his son Jason, 35, are accused of using the cash to fund their lavish lifestyles. Alan Brand is being charged with insurance fraud, money laundering, bribery, and grand larceny. Jason Brand, faces grand larceny and insurance fraud charges. The pair's bank accounts have been frozen and seized assets including  mansions on Long Island and condos in Florida. Six luxury cars, including an electric yellow 1969 Corvette, an $80,000 Tesla and a 2002 Jaguar X have also been impounded.

question: To think there are some people who still argue that the law shouldn't categorize some offenses as hate crimes and allow for enhanced criminal penalties. They claim that all sorts of crimes are motivated by hate, and to separate some from others elevates some victims over others and amounts to the state policing thoughts and feelings. They also fear that politicians and institutions are simply yielding to political correctness, liberal pressure groups and identity politics. My view is that hate crimes deserve special punishment because they don't just victimize whoever they're aimed at; they're intended to send a message, and they terrorize the whole society. That debate might have been settled Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where hate was on display. A shooting left one man dead: Stephen Tyrone Johns, a six-year veteran of the museum's security staff who, according to museum director Sara Bloomfield, "died heroically in the line of duty." The alleged assailant is James von Brunn, a Holocaust denier who created an anti-Semitic Web site. The 88-year-old often challenged the authenticity of "The Diary of Anne Frank," the book about a teenage girl living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. So it was probably no coincidence that the shooting occurred on the same day the museum had scheduled a play based on a fictional meeting between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, a martyr of the civil rights movement. Von Brunn also had longstanding ties to white supremacist groups, according to authorities. These outfits flourish in bad times because they give underperformers something really valuable: convenient scapegoats for their troubles, failures and shortcomings. Without that, these misfits might actually have to look in the mirror and take responsibility for their own lives. Although these groups are properly categorized as "hate groups" by organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, what also fuels them are things like fear and insecurity. Nowadays, their targets are often Latinos, especially immigrants. But, before that and for much of the history of this country, the targets have been African-Americans. And, for much of the history of the world, they have been Jews. And that prejudice hasn't gone away. Consider what the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former Chicago, Illinois, pastor whose relationship with Barack Obama became an issue in the presidential election, recently told the Virginia newspaper, the Daily Press, when asked if he speaks to Obama. "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me," Wright said in an apparent reference to some of Obama's aides. Wright later said he misspoke and meant to refer to "Zionists." A researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center has said her group had a thick file on von Brunn going back 20 years and that he had become a "hardcore neo-Nazi." Von Brunn blamed a six-year prison term he once served -- for the attempted kidnapping of Federal Reserve board members in 1981 -- on "a Negro jury," "Jew/Negro attorneys" and "a Jew judge," according to his Web site. In documents read at trial, von Brunn wrote that his goal was to "deport all Jews and blacks from the white nations." Also, on his Web site, there's a message lamenting how "bit by bit government institutions and Congressmen fell into JEW hands -- then U.S. diplomacy, businesses, resources and manpower came under Jew control." You get the picture. It's no mystery what this guy is, to anyone but himself. His court-appointed lawyer from the Federal Reserve case said von Brunn, a veteran, considers himself a patriot. He's no such thing. That concept is best defined as love for one's country, not hatred for everyone else. It's also obvious that, while Americans are always in a hurry to close our most unpleasant chapters, anti-Semitism is alive and well in parts of our society. Like its equally vile cousins -- racism and nativism -- it thrives because many people are threatened by change and eager to cast others as villains. Meanwhile, President Obama said the museum shooting "reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms." So true, Mr. President. Here's to vigilance. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.

answer:
Ruben Navarrette: Hate crimes should be punished more severely. He says hate crimes terrorize society as a whole. Navarrette: Latinos, blacks and Jews have all been targets of haters. He says Obama is right to urge constant vigilance against hate.