A South Florida healthcare executive and the telemarketing operator he paid to funnel him patients are headed to federal prison for a scheme that billed Medicare roughly $35 million for braces that elderly beneficiaries never needed. A federal judge in Miami handed down sentences of 17 years and nearly eight years after a jury convicted the two men, capping a case built on overseas call centers, boilerplate doctor sign-offs, and relentless cold calls to seniors. The money at stake was not abstract: Medicare Advantage plans paid more than $19 million on the fraudulent claims, a cost that ultimately lands on the taxpayers and premium-payers who fund the program.
How the $35 million brace scheme worked
Michael Kochen, 42, of Aventura, owned dozens of companies that sold durable medical equipment such as back, knee, shoulder, and ankle braces, and he paid illegal kickbacks to Sandro Herek, 56, of Coral Springs, to keep a stream of Medicare beneficiaries flowing to those companies. Herek oversaw and directed overseas call centers, including operations in Egypt and other countries, that aggressively cold-called Medicare beneficiaries who had never requested anything. Representatives called back repeatedly after initial refusals and leaned on high-pressure tactics to push equipment on seniors regardless of whether a physician had ever found it medically necessary.
Physicians frequently issued standardized or boilerplate authorizations based solely on call recordings rather than real examinations, and in many cases the doctors never spoke with the beneficiary at all. Kochen also paid kickbacks to telemedicine companies to obtain the prescription orders that made the claims look legitimate on paper. Senior U.S. District Judge Donald L. Graham sentenced Kochen to 204 months and Herek to 92 months after both were convicted at trial on conspiracy, health care fraud, and kickback charges, with the court noting the scheme generated roughly $35 million in claims and more than $19 million in payments.
The two roles fit together by design. Kochen supplied the paperwork and the equipment, while Herek supplied the volume, and the overseas call centers gave the operation both cheap labor and distance from U.S. regulators. That division let the scheme run at industrial scale, generating a steady stream of beneficiary numbers and prescription orders that could be converted into millions of dollars in claims before Medicare’s payment systems flagged the pattern, a lag that fraud rings count on to move fast and cash out early.
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Why Medicare brace fraud keeps targeting seniors
Durable medical equipment schemes have become a staple of Medicare fraud because the mechanics are easy to scale and hard for a beneficiary to detect. A senior’s Medicare number is the currency; once a call center obtains it, a chain of paid doctors and supply companies can generate claims for braces, creams, or tests the patient may barely remember discussing. Because the beneficiary usually pays nothing out of pocket in the moment, the friction that might otherwise raise alarms disappears, even as the government is billed hundreds or thousands of dollars per item.
The financial damage is staggering in aggregate. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans age 60 and older lost nearly $4.9 billion to fraud in 2024, and health care schemes billed directly to Medicare add billions more on top of that figure. Every fraudulent claim paid drains trust-fund dollars meant for legitimate care and helps push up the premiums and taxes that support the program, which is why prosecutors increasingly treat these cases as crimes against both the individual senior and the wider pool of beneficiaries.
The structure also insulates the people at the top. The seniors who answer the phone never meet the executives who profit, the doctors who sign off may work through a telemedicine intermediary, and the equipment ships from companies with unremarkable names. Each layer adds deniability, which is why building a case takes years of records and why a conviction that names the executive and the telemarketer at the center of the scheme is comparatively rare.
How beneficiaries can catch a fraudulent charge
The clearest defense is the paperwork Medicare already sends. Officials urge beneficiaries to read every explanation of benefits and Medicare Summary Notice line by line, to watch for equipment or services that were never received, and to treat any unsolicited call offering free braces or supplies as a warning sign rather than an opportunity. Suspicious claims can be reported to 1-800-MEDICARE or to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, which takes fraud reports directly from the public and investigates the exact patterns seen in this case.
Vigilance matters because the paperwork is often the only place a scheme leaves a visible trace. A brace billed to a beneficiary who never wanted it still shows up on a statement, and a single flagged claim can be the thread that unravels an operation running thousands of numbers at once.
Family members often catch what a beneficiary misses. An adult child helping a parent review statements is well positioned to notice a brace that never arrived or a supplier no one recognizes, and reporting a single suspicious line item costs nothing. Because these schemes recycle the same tactics across thousands of numbers, one report can help investigators connect a lone fraudulent claim to a much larger operation already under scrutiny.
The prosecution’s promise to pursue asset forfeiture points to the one form of restitution that reaches the program directly. Money recovered from the defendants can be returned toward the losses, though seized assets rarely cover the full amount billed, and the recovery process can stretch on well after sentencing. For beneficiaries, the more immediate protection remains the same as it was before the case: guard the Medicare number as carefully as a debit card, and assume any unsolicited offer of free equipment is the opening move of a scheme.
The sentences reflect a broader federal push against Medicare fraud aimed at older Americans. Prosecutors said the case was investigated by HHS-OIG and the FBI’s Miami field office, and that the government would pursue forfeiture and recovery of the defendants’ ill-gotten gains rather than leave the loss on taxpayers. Recovery in these cases is often only partial, because the proceeds are frequently spent or moved offshore before charges are ever filed.
What the case does not resolve is how to stop the next call center before it dials. The braces at the center of this scheme were plausible enough to clear payment, the doctors’ sign-offs looked routine, and the seniors who answered the phone had no way to know their Medicare numbers were being monetized overseas. Until the incentives that reward volume over medical necessity are addressed, the strongest protection remains a beneficiary who reads every statement and questions every charge.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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