Brett Blackman, 43, of Johnson County, Kansas, was sentenced Thursday to 19 years in federal prison for running a platform that manufactured doctors’ orders and prescriptions to drain more than $1 billion from Medicare and other federal health programs, the Department of Justice said.
How DMERx worked
Blackman owned and ran HealthSplash, which bought Power Mobility Doctor Rx, known as DMERx, in September 2017. DMERx was an internet platform. Prosecutors said he and his co-conspirators used it to link pharmacies, equipment suppliers and marketers with telemedicine companies willing to take kickbacks in exchange for signed orders. The conspirators kept a share for themselves.
The targets were Medicare beneficiaries, hundreds of thousands of them, pressed to accept orthotic braces and other items they did not need. The orders claimed a doctor had examined and treated each patient. In fact, prosecutors said, the doctors were paid to sign, often with little or no contact with the person named, and sometimes none at all.
An undercover agent at the center of the trial
Jurors heard from an undercover agent who posed as a beneficiary. A call center abroad pushed the agent to agree to several braces. A doctor then signed orders saying in-person tests had been done, though the doctor had never spoken to the agent.
Concealment was routine, according to trial evidence. The conspirators relied on sham contracts and edited the orders to dodge Medicare audits, including by deleting references to telemedicine.
The numbers
Medicare was billed for braces for more than 346,000 beneficiaries, an average of four each. More than 1,200 of them were billed for at least 21 orthotics prescribed through the platform. Suppliers and pharmacies paying the kickbacks billed Medicare and other insurers over $1 billion, and those payers handed over more than $450 million.
“The defendant’s fraud scheme lured hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled Americans into a sophisticated international telemarketing system,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division.
The FBI, HHS-OIG, the VA Office of Inspector General and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigated. Veterans’ and TRICARE programs were among those affected, officials from the VA and DCIS noted.
Verdict and what remains
A jury convicted Blackman in April 2026, after a 23-day trial, of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with health care matters. His co-defendant, Gary Cox, received 15 years in December 2025. The court will set Blackman’s restitution and forfeiture at a later date.
Sources
- Kansas man going to prison for $1B Medicare fraud scheme
- Kansas man going to prison for $1B Medicare fraud scheme
- Kansas CEO sentenced to 19 years in $1B Medicare fraud scheme
Photo: 25or6to4 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
