A federal jury in South Florida just convicted the man behind one of the largest Medicare fraud operations in the state’s history, a billion-dollar scheme built on fake doctors’ orders, illegal kickbacks, and the systematic targeting of hundreds of thousands of sick and elderly Americans.

Brett Blackman, the 42-year-old founder and owner of a health care software company called HealthSplash, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with health care matters.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not mince words, calling it “industrial-scale theft targeting the sick and elderly” and declaring that the Department of Justice “crushed one of the most egregious fraud schemes in Florida history.”

The Justice Department laid out the scope of the operation in detail:

According to the DOJ, Blackman owned and controlled HealthSplash, which acquired an internet-based platform called Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC, also known as DMERx. That platform generated false and fraudulent doctors’ orders for durable medical equipment and bogus prescriptions. Blackman and his co-conspirators aggressively targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, pushing them to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces and other items. Purported telemedicine doctors signed bogus prescription orders so suppliers could bill Medicare. The doctors’ orders falsely represented that doctors had examined and treated beneficiaries when, in fact, the doctors were paid to sign orders without meaningful interaction, and sometimes without any interaction at all. Durable medical equipment suppliers and pharmacies paying illegal kickbacks then billed Medicare and other insurers for more than $1 billion. Medicare and other insurers paid out more than $450 million based on those fraudulent claims. A co-defendant, Gary Cox, was convicted in a prior trial and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

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Read that again. More than a billion dollars billed. More than $450 million paid out. Doctors rubber-stamping orders for patients they never spoke to. Vulnerable seniors flooded with calls and mailers pressuring them to accept equipment they never needed.

Blackman faces up to 20 years in prison on the health care fraud and wire fraud conspiracy count alone, plus five years on each of the other two conspiracy counts. Sentencing is scheduled for August 26, 2026.

This conviction did not happen in a vacuum. It is part of a much larger offensive the Trump administration is waging against the army of fraudsters who have been looting Medicare for years.

Just one day before the DOJ announced the Blackman verdict, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a sweeping new crackdown directly tied to Vice President JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force.

CMS announced a six-month nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies:

CMS said the action, taken in coordination with Vice President Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force, temporarily halts the influx of new providers into high-risk categories and is aimed at stopping improper billing and preventing bad actors from entering Medicare in the first place. Existing providers are unaffected and can continue delivering services to Medicare beneficiaries. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said the agency has seen “systemic and deeply troubling fraud” in hospice and home health, including bad actors exploiting vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing taxpayer money. CMS said it will intensify investigations, deploy advanced data analytics, and accelerate removals of providers suspected of fraud. Recent action in Los Angeles alone resulted in payment suspensions to 773 hospices and 23 home health agencies suspected of fraud, representing $70 million in suspended funds so far. With three separate moratoria now in place, CMS said it has taken some of the most significant fraud prevention actions in its history.

Think about what that means. In just one city, Los Angeles, nearly 800 hospice operations were suspicious enough to have their payments frozen. That is not a few bad apples. That is a sector riddled with predators who figured out that nobody was watching the money.

For decades, Medicare fraud has been treated like a cost of doing business in Washington. Bureaucrats shrugged. Regulators shuffled paper. And billions of dollars that were supposed to keep sick and elderly Americans alive went into the pockets of con artists running fake operations out of strip malls and offshore call centers.

The Trump administration is treating it like what it actually is: organized theft from the American people. The DOJ is putting the criminals in prison. CMS is locking the front door so new scammers cannot waltz in. And Vice President Vance’s task force is tying all of it together with a level of seriousness that taxpayers have been waiting years to see.

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Brett Blackman built a billion-dollar machine to steal from Medicare patients and the taxpayers who fund their care. A federal jury just made sure that machine is finished. Now the question is how many more like him are out there, and the Trump administration clearly intends to find out.

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