Aug. 25--Suspected of fleeing to Cuba, three Miami-Dade brothers wanted for Medicare fraud are accused of laundering $24 million of their bounty by using shell companies to cash checks at a local chain of stores, according to a federal court record.

The Benitez brothers' link to La Bamba Check Cashing -- the now-defunct business that was indicted along with its president in a separate case this year -- reveals a new dimension to the way the siblings laundered some of their $84 million in ill-gotten Medicare payments to the Dominican Republic.

The latest accusation against Carlos, Luis and Jose Benitez -- described by authorities as the poster boys of South Florida's Medicare fraud fugitives -- surfaced in an FBI document filed in federal court this month.

It has bolstered prosecutors' efforts this summer to seize their bank accounts and other assets acquired in the Dominican Republic, including a helicopter, a water park, houses, apartments, hotels, vehicles and boats.

The FBI affidavit alleges the Cuban-born Benitez brothers also transferred about $3.3 million in Medicare fraud proceeds to bank accounts in the Dominican Republic in 2003.

U.S. District Judge Alan Gold signed a protective order to block their access to those assets on Aug. 5. That day, The Miami Herald published a story about the Benitez brothers and 33 other Medicare criminal defendants who fled South Florida after being charged with defrauding the taxpayer-funded health insurance program since 2004.

Half of the fugitives fled to Cuba and the rest to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other countries, according to the FBI. The Benitez brothers, using Cuban passports, traveled from South Florida to the Dominican Republic and then to Cuba, before their indictment was unsealed in June.

This past week, FBI agents and Dominican police seized more of the brothers' assets, in the southeastern city of Higuey. Among them: a two-story house, several plots of land and nine Paso Fino horses, which were sent to the national zoo in Santo Domingo. Authorities also opened their safe deposit box at a bank in Higuey.

Other joint anti-laundering operations, targeting the brothers' network of assets and associates, are planned for Higuey, La Romana and Bavaro.

The Miami indictment alleges Carlos, Luis and Jose Benitez used various "sham marketing and management companies" such as "America Consulting, Inc." to launder Medicare payments initially made to their dozen HIV drug-infusion clinics in Miami-Dade.