DMERx, an online DME platform, served as the basis for a massive fraud against Medicare and other insurers. Gregory Schreck, a Kansas man who was the vice president of DMERx, orchestrated a sophisticated fraud scheme to bill Medicare and other insurers over $1 billion, resulting in payments of over $350 million. The scheme used DMERx’s online platform to engage and pay kickbacks to telemedicine entities who provided doctors’ orders for DME, sometimes based on no doctor-patient interaction at all.
Schreck and his co-conspirators targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries to provide their information and agree to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, pain creams, and other items through misleading mailers, television ads, and calls from offshore call centers. The DMERx platform then generated fraudulent doctors’ orders for the items.
Schreck pleaded guilty to conspiracy and will face up to 10 years in prison.
