A Kansas businessman has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for operating an online platform that generated fraudulent medical orders to defraud Medicare, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Brett Blackman, 43, of Johnson County, Kansas, was convicted after a 23-day trial on charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with healthcare matters.
Blackman owned HealthSplash, which acquired the DMERx platform in 2017. His co-defendant Gary Cox received a 15-year sentence in December 2025.
How the Scheme Operated
The DMERx platform connected suppliers with doctors who signed orders for unneeded orthotic braces without examining patients. DME suppliers and pharmacies paying illegal kickbacks for the orders submitted more than $1 billion in claims to Medicare and other insurers. Medicare and other insurers paid out more than $450 million on fraudulent claims.
Blackman and his co-conspirators concealed the scheme through sham contracts and altered doctors' orders to evade Medicare audits, including by removing references to telemedicine.
Scale of the Fraud
The scheme resulted in fraudulent Medicare billing for orthotic braces for more than 346,000 beneficiaries. Medicare was billed for an average of four braces per beneficiary. In more than 1,200 cases, beneficiaries received at least 21 orthotics prescribed through the DMERx platform.
According to Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division, "The Department of Justice and our agency partners dismantled one of the largest telemedicine fraud schemes ever, and yesterday's lengthy prison sentence holds the orchestrator of that scheme accountable."
