Tag: fraud

Florida Man Convicted of Billing Medicare $15 Million for Blood Tests Patients Never Wanted

A federal jury in the Southern District of Florida has convicted a Florida man who was the vice president of a testing laboratory and owned and operated a separate marketing company for his role in a fraud scheme that took advantage of patients who wanted COVID-19 tests during the pandemic and were instead given additional blood tests they did not want or need, for which Medicare was billed over $15 million.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Joseph Rodriguez, 58, of Coral Springs, perpetrated a scheme that exploited elderly patients at residential country clubs in the West Palm Beach area who were desperate for COVID-19 nasal swab and blood antibody tests. 

“The defendant took advantage of patients desperate for COVID-19 tests at the height of the pandemic to bill Medicare for unnecessary blood tests,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Such egregious conduct in the face of a global pandemic cannot stand and will be prosecuted. The Fraud Division remains committed to holding the perpetrators of such schemes accountable.”

When those patients signed up to receive just swab and antibody tests at drive-through testing events at their residence clubs organized by Rodriguez through his marketing company, Phoenix Health, they were, in addition to the COVID-19 tests they wanted, subjected to tens or even hundreds of unnecessary blood tests that they did not want or need, and that no doctor ordered as required. These tests, which ranged from hormone tests to heavy metal tests for arsenic, mercury, and cadmium, were then billed to Medicare as if they were medically necessary and ordered by a treating physician.

“This case highlights a troubling scheme that took advantage of vulnerable patients who sought COVID‑19 testing during a national public health crisis, only to be subjected to additional and unnecessary blood tests intended to increase profits,” said Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Miranda L. Bennett of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “By placing personal gain above the well‑being of elderly individuals, the defendant violated their trust and threatened the integrity of our health care system. HHS‑OIG remains steadfast in its mission to protect public health and ensure that individuals who abuse federal health care programs and the people they serve are held fully accountable.”

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Former Senior CIA Officer Pleads GUILTY to $194 MILLION Taxpayer Heist — Fake Classified Programs, 298 Gold Bars, Florida Luxury Homes, Rolexes

A former senior CIA officer who held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance pleaded guilty Tuesday to a scheme that prosecutors say drained approximately $194 million from the federal government, money he converted into gold bars, Florida luxury properties, Rolex watches, and high-end cars.

David J. Rush, 49, of Ashburn, Virginia, admitted the fraud in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The Justice Department said he fraudulently obtained approximately $193,590,400 by misusing his senior executive-level position and inventing fictitious government authorities, including a fabricated Special Access Program, to pull U.S. funds for his own use.

According to the Department of Justice, Rush reached that trusted post in part by lying about his education and military experience. Once inside, he used the clearance and the authority that came with it to move money that never belonged to him.

The scheme split into two tracks that prosecutors described as the same overarching fraud. Rush directed approximately $145 million in wire transfers that he used to buy luxury real estate, watches, and at least one car. Separately, he obtained gold bars at an approximate cost to the government of $46 million.

Court filings reported by CBS News say he invented a fake classified program to steer the real-estate money through a front company and a holding company he controlled, then bought properties in Palm Beach and Hobe Sound, Florida, that he intended to resell for profit. He also fabricated a separate purported sensitive government activity to justify the gold.

The FBI search of his Virginia home on May 19 recovered 298 gold bars, approximately $2,106,550 in cash, €104,795, and numerous luxury watches.

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Multi-Million Dollar TRICARE Fraud Bought A Gold-Plated Cybertruck And Casino Parties

Millions of dollars spent on casino-themed parties, expensive hotels and a gold-plated Cybertruck. It sounds like the spending spree of a character from The Wolf of Wall Street. Instead, federal prosecutors say the absurd spending was financed by a 64-year-old mental health clinic owner named Kevin Darnell Curry.

Curry, who owned and operated Acuity TMS of Plano, Acuity TMS of Fort Worth and Emerald Coast TMS of Fort Walton Beach, was convicted of submitting roughly $26 million in fraudulent claims to TRICARE, which paid out approximately $17 million.

These clinics, which offered transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, operated in areas with substantial military populations. His Fort Walton Beach clinic sat in the same Florida Panhandle military community as Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field, while his Fort Worth operation was near Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. A third clinic operated in Plano, north of Dallas, Texas.

The scheme involved an unknown number of active duty service members, veterans and military family members covered by TRICARE, though the indictment did not identify where they lived or which installations, if any, the active-duty beneficiaries were assigned to. Curry falsely presented himself as a medical doctor, using fake credentials to convince service members and families to sign up for the treatment.

Curry was convicted of three counts of health care fraud, three counts of offering and paying illegal health care kickbacks and three counts of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property. Federal authorities previously seized approximately $200,000 in assets connected to Curry’s case, including $136,022 in cash and the gold-plated Cybertruck, according to the Justice Department.

Prosecutors say Curry recruited TRICARE beneficiaries through illegal kickbacks and bribes to receive TMS, then billed TRICARE for treatments that weren’t provided, weren’t provided as represented or for which patients did not qualify.

TMS is a noninvasive treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells in areas of the brain involved in depression. TRICARE covers the treatment for some patients with major depressive disorder when other treatments have failed.

To qualify, patients generally had to have tried at least two antidepressants from different drug classes without success and undergone evidence-based psychotherapy that also failed to adequately treat their depression, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors say some of Curry’s patients did not meet those requirements. His clinics allegedly submitted false information about beneficiaries’ treatment histories to obtain authorization from TRICARE, including records claiming patients had unsuccessfully tried medications they had not actually taken.

The scheme turned military beneficiaries into a source of millions of dollars in fraudulent TRICARE payments and unfolded inside a military health system that has simultaneously been trying to convince service members they can trust it enough to seek mental health care.

Despite the benefits of treatment, an estimated 60% to 70% of military personnel experiencing mental health problems do not seek mental health services, according to the Defense Department’s Psychological Health Center of Excellence.

The Pentagon attributes that gap to a range of barriers, including stigma and concerns about how seeking treatment could affect a service member’s career.

Those concerns can include fears about being viewed as weak, being treated differently by military leadership or losing the confidence of others in their unit.

It remains unclear how much of the approximately $17 million paid by TRICARE has been recovered.

Curry is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date and faces up to 10 years in prison on each count.

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Trump Admin Cancels $2.2 Billion In Phony Obamacare Enrollments — And Brokers Who Facilitated Them

The Trump administration’s latest action to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the Obamacare Exchanges entailed disenrolling people from insurance plans — costing taxpayers billions — who couldn’t identify themselves with proper documentation.

It’s the kind of move that would prompt ordinary taxpayers in the heartland to ask: Why didn’t they do that sooner?

Ghost Enrollees

In a fact sheet, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it had “canceled approximately 315,000 enrollments covering over 760,000 individuals after confirmation that these enrollments were unauthorized.” The action, taken after investigations in coordination with insurance companies, will result in approximately $2.2 billion in Obamacare subsidies being refunded to the federal government.

At the same time, CMS announced it had sent “569 notices of intent to terminate Exchange Agreements to agents and brokers that submitted 2026 applications [for coverage] without identifying applicant information, such as a Social Security number.” It said 66 of those agents and brokers had already been terminated, and more will likely follow as CMS receives responses from the relevant parties.

Questionable Enrollment Persists

CMS also published an interim final rule (i.e., one taking effect immediately) imposing a six-month moratorium on the new registration of brokers and agents, allowing CMS to implement another round of program integrity measures to guard against fraud by agents and brokers. (The moratorium will not apply in states that run their own Exchanges, which set their own rules regarding insurance brokers.) The move caused some pushback from the broker community, which said this punishes the innocent with the guilty since no new broker will be able to register until next February, after the open enrollment period for 2027.

In response, CMS cited data indicating that new agents for the current (i.e., 2026) plan year had significantly higher rates of questionable enrollment — for instance, a 2.8-time higher rate of “unresolved income verification issues,” a 2.7-time higher rate of “missing Social Security numbers,” a 2.6-time higher rate of “unresolved citizenship or immigration status verification issues,” and a 1.4-time higher rate of dual enrollment in Exchange coverage and Medicaid. To CMS, these data points suggest that new brokers may be disproportionately seeking to enroll ineligible individuals primarily for the commissions, and justified the registration moratorium as a preventive measure.

Prior Government Audit

While taking action to prevent fraud is always welcome, did these particular steps come too late? CMS’s latest announcement raises questions about when and why brokers are being terminated or reinstated.

Specifically, an audit released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last December addressed this issue. It noted that, in October 2024, CMS “suspended 850 agents and brokers from the federal Marketplace [i.e., Exchange] for reasonable suspicion of fraudulent or abusive conduct related to unauthorized enrollments or unauthorized plan switches. However, in May 2025, CMS officials told us that the agency reinstated all these suspended agents and brokers to better fulfill the agency’s statutory and regulatory procedures.” 

It isn’t clear why CMS reinstated the brokers last May and whether any of the reinstated brokers were among those who received new termination notices over the summer. But the reinstatements came at a time when the federal government continued to struggle with program integrity efforts.

The recent interim final rule noted that in 2025, CMS received approximately 300,000 “complaints attesting to unauthorized enrollments or unauthorized plan switching.” A separate GAO report, released in July, disclosed a total of 299,604 such complaints last year — an increase from 258,424 in 2024. Thankfully, CMS said in the interim final rule that these trends have reversed in 2026. But given the persistence of eligibility fraud through 2025, CMS should make its reasoning behind last year’s broker reinstatements and this year’s subsequent terminations clear — and if it doesn’t, Congress should ask those questions on behalf of the American people.

As last year’s GAO report noted, a total of 19 of 20 fictitious enrollees were able to obtain subsidized coverage from the federal Exchange. Taxpayers should find that unacceptable, and most ordinary Americans would, regardless of political party. It’s why Washington should continue digging into fraud and demanding accountability. We the people deserve no less.

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President Trump Calls for Mandatory Prison Sentences for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security Fraudsters – Says Crooked Politicians Who Cover It Up Must Face Real Consequences

President Donald Trump is calling on Congress to finally put real teeth behind the government’s war on fraud, mandatory prison sentences for criminals caught stealing from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

In a video released Saturday, Trump demanded legislation establishing mandatory minimum sentences for fraudsters who loot the federal programs millions of Americans depend on.

Under Trump’s proposal, probation would no longer be an option for covered fraud offenses.

“Today, I’m calling on Congress to pass legislation to address fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs,” Trump said.

“First, Congress must impose mandatory minimum sentences on fraudsters who steal from critical benefit programs designed to take care of the sick, feed the hungry, care for our children, and protect our senior citizens’ retirements.”

“Under our proposal, probation is no longer an option for the fraudsters. If you steal from the American people, you will go to prison and for a long period of time. And the more you steal, the longer you’ll stay in that prison,” he said. “If you’re a convicted fraudster who gets caught stealing from the American people a second time, your sentence will be doubled.”

Then he went after the politicians.

“Second, Congress must make sure that crooked and corrupt politicians who willfully turn a blind eye to fraud finally face real consequences,” Trump said.

“Under our proposal, if a state or local politician knows about fraud and has the ability to stop it, but does nothing about it, they can be personally liable for the full loss of the American taxpayers’ money that they should have stopped and they should have saved.”

The White House published the president’s announcement Saturday under the title “Minimum Sentences on Fraudsters.”

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Michigan Woman Who Received Biden-Era Presidential Award Arrested in Alleged $1 Million Fraud Scheme

A Michigan woman who plastered photos of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next to her name in 2024 has been arrested and charged with wire fraud after federal prosecutors say she posed as an ambassador, a private banker, and a successful hotel owner to steal more than $1 million from victims.

Shannon Monet Steel, 42, of Farmington Hills, was arrested by the FBI and made her first appearance in federal court in Detroit on September 1, 2026.

She is charged with wire fraud. She was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Wire fraud carries a maximum of 20 years in federal prison.

According to the New York Post, which reviewed court filings first reported by the Detroit News, Steel targeted at least eight victims between 2022 and 2026 and pocketed at least $1.05 million in so-called “good faith” escrow money. Prosecutors say she promised victims millions in loans from a bank that does not exist, then kept the cash.

The lies were not subtle.

Steel publicly billed herself as an appointed ambassador of the Central African Republic to the United States and as “Ambassador to the First Lady” of that country.

On her foundation website, she wrote that she was “the newly appointed Ambassador for the First Lady of C.A.R. NGO on a mission to eradicate poverty.” Investigators say she is not an accredited diplomat of any country to the United States.

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Nigerian Man Accused of Running Fake Government Agency with Federal Budget

An enterprising Nigerian named Adeniyi Adeyemi is facing charges in the capital of Abuja for creating and running a fake government agency for over a year, complete with about $1 million in funding from the Nigerian federal government.

According to prosecutors, Adeyemi created an agency called the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) in 2024 and installed himself as director-general. He kept the phony agency going until he was arrested in October 2025.

Adeyemi was somehow able to secure office space for his fake agency inside the Federal Secretariat office complex in Abuja, along with a million dollars of funding. He got his hands on some presidential stationery and used it to request cooperation from other government agencies – and evidently some of his requests were taken seriously, although prosecutors have not yet indicted any other government officials for colluding with him.

Police investigators said they have traced a total of 34 bank accounts to Adeyemi, including nine of them that were opened in the name of various government agencies. According to prosecutors, Adeyemi even recruited staffers to work for his fake agency.

The ersatz Director-General of the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) also forged a realistic-looking letter of appointment from President Bola Tinubu, purportedly signed by presidential chief of staff Femi Gbajabiamila.

Gbajabiamila was the official who filed a petition to arrest Adeyemi, who faces eight counts of conspiracy, forgery, and impersonation alongside two accomplices known as “Femi” and “Anu,” who remain at large.

The Premium Times of Nigeria reported that Adeyemi appeared before the Federal High Court in Abuja for his arraignment on Wednesday “after several failed attempts to bring him before the court.”

Those previous attempts were unsuccessful “for various reasons,” including based on requests by his lawyers, his absence from court and the judge’s official engagement elsewhere. A judge swore out a bench warrant for Adeyemi’s arrest after he failed to appear for a July arraignment, and he was arrested within 12 hours, but it still took a surprisingly long time to get him into court.

Adeyemi said through his lawyers that he skipped out on his July arraignment because he “feared for his life” and had written an open letter to President Tinubu asking for protection. The Premium Times observed that he did not look particularly fearful when he finally made it to the courtroom on Wednesday, strolling cheerfully into chambers wearing a baseball cap and a white traditional robe known as a kaftan.

Adeyemi pleaded not guilty to all eight of the charges against him and was remanded to custody in the Kuje Correctional Center by the judge. He has claimed in media interviews that his PFIPC was a legitimate agency and he was working to bring foreign investment into Nigeria.

The case has become a hot topic among Nigerians, who have long complained about corruption and incompetence in their government, but are still shocked that a random con artist could create and operate a phony high-level government agency for months without being detected.

Some critics of the Tinubu government have postulated that Adeyami could only keep his scam running for so long if he was paying off legitimate government officials to evade oversight.

Adeyemi himself has claimed he paid Gbababiamila, the presidential chief of staff, a fee of 400 million Nigerian nairas (about $300,000) to help him forge his fake presidential appointment document. Adeyemi has asked Tinubu to establish an independent anti-corruption panel to investigate his case.

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Pakistani National Charged in Massive $126 Million USPS Counterfeit Postage Scheme — Feds Seize Website That Allegedly Sold More Than 5 MILLION Fake Shipping Labels

A 33-year-old Pakistani national has been federally charged after authorities say he ran an unauthorized website that dumped more than 5.1 million counterfeit U.S. Postal Service shipping labels into the American mail stream, and left the Postal Service holding the bag for more than $126 million.

According to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Faheem Akram of Khanewal, Pakistan, operated LabelsBank.com, a site that was never authorized to sell USPS products. Investigators say the site sold fake postage at a flat cut-rate price, typically $2 a label, no matter the package’s weight, size, or destination.

Postal inspectors in Miami say more than 5,000 customers used the site.

According to NBC 6 South Florida, more than 5,200 buyers purchased the phony labels and shipped packages at rates far below what honest Americans pay. The website has now been seized and shut down.

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted Akram on one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make and sell counterfeit postage stamps, five counts of making and selling counterfeit postage stamp labels, and four counts of wire fraud. As prosecutors note, charges are allegations. He is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

If convicted, he faces up to five years on the conspiracy and counterfeit-postage counts and up to 20 years on each wire-fraud count, according to NBC 6.

U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, President Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, did not mince words.

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IRS Probing $100 Billion In Potential COVID-19 Loan Fraud

Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration (SBA) referred more than $200 billion in suspected COVID loan fraud to the IRS.

The tax agency then compared the information that the borrowers submitted to the SBA when applying for the loans with the information they declared to the IRS.

Analysis identified discrepancies associated with approximately $100 billion in loans, the SBA said in a Sept. 23 statement.

The IRS will determine whether additional taxes and penalties apply, including penalties for committing fraud, according to the SBA.

The suspected fraud pertains to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) initiatives.

PPP was aimed at helping businesses keep their workforce during the pandemic, while EIDL provided loans and advances to help businesses recover from the economic impacts of the crisis.

In 2023, the SBA judged that 20 percent of the $1.2 trillion pandemic relief program could have been obtained by fraud.

SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said:

“The IRS’s identification of approximately $100 billion in suspected tax fraud sends a clear message: fraudsters who stole from SBA’s COVID-relief programs will … face accountability at the SBA.

“If they inflated payroll, fabricated employee counts, falsified business records, or otherwise lied to obtain taxpayer-funded loans, they will also face scrutiny from the IRS.“

The federal government is estimated to lose $233 billion to $521 billion annually to fraud, the Government Accountability Office said in an April 2024 report.

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Bombshell Report Links Amy Klobuchar To Minnesota Fraud Scandal

Another major Minnesota Democrat is being pulled into the political fallout surrounding an autism provider now under state investigation, with records showing the center’s CEO previously worked on Amy Klobuchar’s first U.S. Senate campaign.

Nimco Ahmed, CEO of Milestone Development Center, has been a fixture in Democratic-Farmer-Labor politics for years and recently drew attention after appearing alongside Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in a viral video.

Now Alpha News reports that Ahmed was also part of Klobuchar’s political operation during her first Senate run in 2006.

A 2006 profile published by Mshale reported that Ahmed joined the “Klobuchar team” and listed her contact email as nahmed@amyklobuchar.com.

Other archived articles from the outlet also identified Ahmed as a staffer on Klobuchar’s 2006 campaign.

Federal campaign finance records cited in the report indicate Klobuchar’s campaign paid Ahmed nearly $8,000 during that election cycle.

The connection is drawing new scrutiny because Milestone Development Center is currently under investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

DHS has confirmed that Milestone and Spectrum Therapy Center are both subjects of open investigations.

The agency has also said both providers were terminated from participating in Medicaid through Minnesota’s 2026 revalidation process and have appealed those decisions.

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