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Just in time, as I'm sure both myself and everybody watching this video dutifully paid our federal taxes. Last month, the Department of Justice just released a statement announcing the conviction of a man at the center of a giant billion dollar Medicare fraud scheme. Specifically Mr. Brett Blackman, the CEO and owner of a software company called HealthSplash. He was just convicted in federal court for his part in this sprawling industrial scale fraud empire. The scheme it involved using foreign telemarketers to aggressively call hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans, get their Medicare beneficiary numbers, push medical devices on them that they don't really need, things like random things like orthotic braces. Then he would generate fraudulent doctor's orders for those devices. And then with that fake doctor's note in hand, he would use his platform to give it to a pharmacy or some kind of a supplier in return for a kickback and, and that supplier and or pharmacy would in turn bill Medicare for the full amount of the prescription for again things that the Medicare recipient never even needed. In total, Mr. Blackman, alongside his co conspirators billed Medicare and other insurance companies a total of over $1 billion. And they were actually reimbursed roughly $450 million. Let's go through the details together and of course if you appreciate content like this, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons and subscribe so this video can be picked up by the algorithm and shared out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. Now to start with the man as I mentioned at the top of the episode in question here is named Mr. Brett Blackman. As you can see by the photo that was provided to the public by the Department of Justice. Mr. Blackman isn't exactly shy about the money he's made lavishly displaying his wealth, including in a music video featuring a waterfront mansion and an ostentatious dollar sign gold chain necklace, which I'll say is all well and good, that's the American way to make your money, to show it off without any issue. The only problem with his wealth is that it appeared to have come from a giant industrial grade scam. According to the court documents as well as the evidence presented at the actual trial, Mr. Blackman was the CEO and the owner of a company called HealthSplash. It's a healthcare software company. And in September of 2017, HealthSplash acquired another company, this one called Power Mobility Dr. Rx. It's also known within the core documents by the acronym DME rx, which stands for Durable Medical Equipment Rx Prescription and this company had a very interesting business model. It was basically an Internet platform that people could use to get a real doctor's prescription for medical devices that they might need, things like orthotic braces. However, that convenience of being able to do it online was then taken advantage of by Mr. Blackmon and his co conspirators who used it as a platform to generate fake prescription orders without the doctor ever having seen the patient. Quote DMERX was an Internet based platform that generated false and fraudulent doctor's orders for durable medical equipment, DME and prescriptions for other items. As a part of the scheme, Blackmon and his co conspirators connected pharmacies, durable medical equipment suppliers and and marketers with telemedicine companies that would accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctor's orders created using the DMERX platform. Blackmun and his co conspirators took a cut for themselves in exchange for the referrals. And so essentially Mr. Blackman served as something of a middleman in this whole enterprise. He basically owned the platform that could be used to generate these extremely valuable doctor's notes. Then he would go out on the back end and find telemarketing doctors who are willing to do it, as well as the pharmacies and orthotic suppliers that were willing to give kickbacks for these valuable notes. And he would be able to pocket a portion of that difference. And that was all on the back end, on the front end. In order to actually get real Americans with real Medicaid beneficiary numbers into the platform, he enlisted the help of foreign telemarketers who would spam nonstop elderly Americans here in the country. Quote Brett Blackmon and his co conspirators aggressively targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries to get them to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces and other items. They then arranged for purported telemedicine doctors to sign bogus prescription orders for these items so that their co conspirators could bill Medicare for them. The fraudulent doctor's orders and prescriptions generated by DMERX were falsely represented that a doctor had actually examined and treated the Medicare beneficiaries, when in fact the doctors were simply paid to sign orders and prescriptions without any meaningful interaction with the beneficiary and in some cases no interaction at all. Doctors signed these orders and prescriptions without regard to whether the equipment was medically necessary. In short, Mr. Blackmon, like a true American entrepreneur, found what appeared to be a good arbitrage opportunity. You Call enough elderly Americans, you get enough of them to tentatively agree and give you their Medicaid beneficiary number. You can then use that to generate fake scripts for them for some device that they don't need. Using your online platform, you can then sell that prescription to a pharmacy or a supplier who gives an illegal kickback for it. And then they bill Medicaid for the full price of the prescription. So for them, for the suppliers and the pharmacies, basically between the kickback they pay and the amount they bill Medicaid, that is a fairly nice profit margin. And in this whole scheme, there did appear to be a good amount of profit. Quote, the durable medical equipment suppliers and pharmacies that were paying illegal kickbacks for these orders billed Medicare and other insurers for more than $1 billion. Medicare and the other insurers paid more than 450 million based on these claims. Their undoing, however, appeared to be just the sheer industrial scale size of the whole operation. Federal investigators eventually caught wind of the whole scheme and what they did was they set up a sting operation with an undercover agent posing as a Medicare beneficiary. Quote, testimony and evidence presented at trial from an undercover agent who posed as a Medicare beneficiary showed the scheme in action, starting with a foreign call center that pushed the undercover agent to agree to multiple braces to a doctor signing bogus orders for the braces using Blackmun's DM ERX platform. The doctor's order for one of these undercover agent beneficiaries claimed that the doctor conducted various tests that can only be performed in person, even though the doctor never even spoke with the undercover agent, quote unquote patient. And so this whole fraudulent scheme was unraveled. The co conspirators were arrested. Mr. Blackmun eventually had his day in court and just last Thursday a jury found him guilty of of multiple counts. Conspiracy to commit health care fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and to receive health care kickbacks, conspiracy to defraud the United States, as well as conspiracy to make false statements in connection with health care related matters. In a separate trial, Mr. Blackman's co defendant, Mr. Gary Cox, he was also convicted and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Mr. Blackmun, however, he himself has yet to be sentenced to that will actually happen in August, but he is facing a maximum of 30 years in prison. And speaking about the case, you have the current Acting Attorney General for the United States say the following. Quote, the Department of Justice crushed one of the most egregious fraud schemes in Florida history. This illegitimate operation stole more than $1 billion from American taxpayers, including hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries. This was cold, calculated industrial scale theft targeting the sick and elderly, coercing vulnerable people into buying unnecessary medical equipment. We will not rest until every fraudster ripping off the American people is held accountable. And so, there you have it. If you'd like to for one, read the court documents in this particular case, I'll throw all those into the description box below this video. Secondly, I'll mention I suddenly realized earlier in the episode I said Medicaid many times when I meant Medicare. So he was ripping off Medicare rather than Medicaid. Sorry for that mistake on my part. And then lastly, if you appreciate content like this, please do smash those like and subscribe buttons so this video can be picked up by the algorithm and shared out to ever more people. Thank you so much for that. And then lastly, I guess just watch out for random people from India calling you and telling you like, hey, you want a medical orthotic device that you probably don't need because probably it's a scam. And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. Stay informed and most importantly, stay free. It.