How Bad Is Fraud? 8 Scammers, Including An Illegal Alien, Billed Taxpayers $1 Billion Each

Bernie Sanders may believe billionaires shouldn’t exist, but the government healthcare programs he wants to expand are so easy to defraud that even unsophisticated criminals are joining the three-comma club.

Medicaid and Medicare billing are a world where Russian mobsters can simply submit bills for $10 billion in urinary catheters, and $1 billion will be paid out. That’s led to the rise of a new phenomenon: the billion-dollar government fraudster, according to a new report on “the new robber barons” from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus.

They include an illegal immigrant who billed Medicare $1.3 billion in six months (he’s still at large), a Filipina nurse who billed $906 million to Medicare and the military’s health plan (she’s free on bail in the United States as she awaits trial), and a Phoenix socialite couple who billed $1.2 billion by performing unneeded treatments on people in hospice (they were wearing $30,000 watches when they were arrested).

1. Kansas man Brett Blackman posed outside his mansion wearing a gold dollar-sign necklace after billing the government more than $1 billion for orthotic braces and other unnecessary equipment for old people, using foreign call centers and fake doctors’ notes. Half of the billion was paid out before he was convicted in May. Prosecutors said Blackman owned DMERx, an “internet-based platform that generated false and fraudulent doctors’ orders for durable medical equipment (DME) and prescriptions for other items. As part of the scheme, Blackman and his co-conspirators connected pharmacies, DME suppliers, and marketers with telemedicine companies that would accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctors’ orders.”
2. Phoenix socialite Alexandra Gehrke and her husband “DJ Jeffrey” King submitted $1.2 billion in claims for “expensive, medically unnecessary” wound grafts for people in hospice. The claims were submitted to Medicare, the military’s TRICARE, and CHAMPVA, a program for the family members of disabled veterans. They bought $1 million in cars, including a Ferrari 488 Spider convertible, along with a $6 million mansion and $10,000 gold cigarette lighter. They were wearing $30,000 watches when they were arrested at an airport in 2024.
3. A nurse from the Philippines, Marizel Yukee, did the same, billing up to $1 million per patient for wound treatments for people on their deathbeds. She was charged with billing $906 million to Medicare and TRICARE. She planned a $5 million beach resort in the Philippines and bought an $865,000 Bulgari necklace. Some wounds were allowed to be infected, while in other cases, surgeries were performed on wounds that had already healed. She was indicted in Houston in June and allowed to remain in her home while awaiting trial.
4. Brian Rowan also allegedly got in on the “wound care” grift, scheming to defraud government healthcare programs of $1.2 billion, often by giving people dying in hospice care unnecessary skin treatments. $614 million was paid out over three years before he was charged in June.
5. Illegal alien Erekle Gugava submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare in just five months, and laundered $7 million to the Russian mob before fleeing the country. He billed for nonexistent services by stealing the identities of elderly Americans. The scheme was flagged thanks to people who reported receiving government benefits reports showing equipment and doctors visits that they had never heard of. Gugava is still at large.
6. Another gang of Russian mobsters absconded with almost $1 billion after submitting more than $10 billion in invoices to Medicare for urinary catheters, using the stolen identities of doctors and senior citizens.
7. Ibrahim Khaldoon Hilmi led a gang of foreigners who submitted $3.7 billion in fake claims for orthotic braces, glucose monitors, and wound dressings. They successfully obtained $5.7 million, and Hilmi fled to Turkey, where he was arrested.
   
8. Herbert Leon Kimble used foreign call centers to pester elderly and disabled Americans into accepting $1.2 billion in “free or low-cost” back, shoulder, wrist, or knee braces that they didn’t need, and which were billed to Medicare. The feds paid $200 million, which they laundered through foreign corporations to purchase yachts and luxury real estate. Kimble was captured in the Philippines in June.

A CNBC story quoted a former Medicare fraudster in Florida saying “It’s just so easy. It’s unbelievable.” It said Medicare spends $901 billion a year and Medicaid spends $734 billion, yet the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General has only 450 agents looking for fraud. At least $100 billion a year, and probably much more, is stolen, experts said.

Ernst said the inability of government healthcare programs to stop paying scam, fly-by-night companies hundreds of millions of dollars shows how the “Medicare for All” pushed by Democratic Socialists would turn out.

“Washington is literally making these scammers instant billionaires off the backs of the working class. Yet, you never hear socialists ranting about this unfair redistribution of wealth,” she said. “When the socialists demand ‘Medicare for All,’ apparently they really mean it, even if that includes Russian mobsters.”

She said the eye-popping totals highlight the need to pass her Protecting American Taxpayers Act, which would require payments to be made as reimbursements after a service is already completed, bar people convicted of defrauding the government from receiving future assistance, and pay bonuses to government auditors who find fraud.