Florida residents are accused of attempting to swindle more than more than half of the $6.5 billion worth of fraud found in what federal officials are calling the biggest health care fraud crackdown in U.S. history.
The 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which was announced Tuesday, June 23, snared 455 defendants in 45 U.S. states and territories. And, of the $6.5 billion in health care fraud that were mostly false claims for Medicare and Medicaid payments, one Floridian is accused of trying to get paid $3.7 billion for durable medical equipment and wound care the Delray Beach and Miami companies he helped set up never provided.
“CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is done playing catch-up,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in the news release announcing the arrests. “We’re deploying advanced data analytics to expose fraud networks, to freeze suspicious payments, and shut down bad actors before they can do damage to the programs that millions of Americans depend on.”
What kinds of crime targets government health care?
The offenses Florida arrestees are tagged with involve distributing opioids, COVID-19 tests, selling Medicare beneficiary identification numbers, ordering unnecessary genetic testing, providing false therapy attendance records, and even one alleging that the accused impersonated his dead neurologist relative so he could sell paperwork that falsely documented a disability that would mean the patient would be exempted from the U.S. civics and English tests required for naturalization.
Most prominently, though, the arrestees caught in this dragnet are accused of dealing in durable medical equipment and, increasingly, placental tissue used for advanced wound care. And one Miami man is accused of being at the center of the most jaw-dropping among the crimes.
Miami man accused of submitting $3.76 billion in fraudulent claims
Ibrahim Khaldoon Hilmi, 58, of Miami, fled the country shortly after numerous negative reviews were posted online alleging that one of his companies, Sunshine Senior Solutions LLC, a medical equipment store in Delray Beach, was committing health care fraud, according to court papers.
Hilmi was arrested in North Cyprus on June 21 and returned to the United States.
False claims were submitted for both Sunshine Senior Solutions and ABRH Care Inc. in Miami to Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and commercial insurers.
His two conspirators who facilitated moving the money around were arrested previously.
Urinary catheters, glucose monitors and a full body support device are among the products Yelp reviewers reported as showing up on their Medicare statements that they never ordered from the companies Hilmi was involved in.
Outside of the case involving billions, health care fraud cases in Florida involve people and businesses from the Panhandle to Miami, from a home health aide and two doctors, and in amounts ranging from the tens of thousands to more than $100 million. The suspects are connected with cases in:
South Florida
∎ Eduardo Javier Ibarra Arrowsmith, 61, of Miami, is facing charges he misused official documents and committed aggravated identity theft when he assumed the identity of a dead relative, who had worked as a neurologist. Court papers say that Arrowsmith, a Cuban national, falsely certified 34 times that U.S. naturalization applicants he examined were disabled and thus exempt from a U.S. civics test and English test in their citizenship application.
∎ Konstantin Braverman, 40, of Lake Worth was charged with submitting claims for COVID-19 tests for enrollees who never asked for them, a news release says. Braverman and his conspirators made 152,000 fraudulent claims to Medicare for the period of January 2023 through November 2023, which resulted in reimbursement claims totaling approximately $14,405,700, of which Braverman received $1.5 million, according to federal officials.
∎ Noel Camacho, 41, of Hialeah Gardens is accused of submitting $227,494 in fraudulent Medicaid claims for psychosocial rehabilitation services. He was working in his capacity as president of Healthy Futures Wellness Center, Inc. when he faked medical records and falsified progress notes for psychosocial services he never provided but charged Medicaid for after he paid Medicaid beneficiaries for their information, according to allegations in state court.
∎ Rene Yartu Couceiro, 57, of Miami, was charged with using a position as a therapist at Miami mental health clinic, Healthy Minds Medical Center, to falsify therapy session attendance records for Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement.
∎ Yilian Cruz, 36, of Miami Lakes, Inti Cruz, 55, of Miami Lakes, and Adaimis Perez Arencibia, 39, of Miami, were charged with fraudulently obtaining more than $1 million in Medicaid reimbursements for psychosocial rehabilitation. The Cruzes, who are married, worked with other co-conspirators to pay illegal kickbacks to elderly Medicaid beneficiaries to falsely sign attendance sheets, according to federal charges.
∎ Dr. Jason Finkelstein, 53, of Fort Worth, Texas, has been accused of using a company based in Boca Raton for $89 million in fraudulent insurance claims for student athletes’ cardiac tests. Court papers alleged he would certify the results as “normal” within seconds of pulling up the images — and continued to do so after one of the patients he declared normal died while exercising with his basketball team.
∎ Ratevia Checondra Hunter, 45, of Miami is charged with fraudulently billing Medicaid for $83,470 in her work as a home health aide for Unlimited Blessing Caregiver Services LLC. The services were provided when the recipient was traveling to school or otherwise unable to receive care, according to charges filed in state court.
∎ Jason Kashou, 40, of Coral Springs is involved with a case filed in Texas, charging him with participating with two others in $73 million worth of fraudulent Medicare billing for COVID-19 tests. The tests were ordered for Medicare beneficiaries who had not requested them, including some who had died.
∎ Taina Moore, 30, of Miami was charged with using her position as owner of a medical equipment company to submit claims for medical equipment in the name of people in Vermont and elsewhere that she paid for their information, according to federal officials in Vermont.
∎ Casilda Muniz Rodriguez, 57, of Hialeah, fraudulently billed Medicare for more than $117 million for skin substitutes and wound care products that were never provided, according to a U.S. Justice Department news release. She set up at least 11 fraudulent clinics and Medicare paid more than $55 million based on these clinics’ fraudulent claims, according to a news release.
∎ Laura Seiler-Anstett, 55, of Coral Springs is charged with working with others to make $58.3 million worth of claims for medically unnecessary durable medical equipment, such as orthotic braces, in her capacity as a medical biller and a consultant. It netted
∎ Eleyn Mirurgia Sanchez, 32, of North Lauderdale is charged with fraudulently representing that her business, Beautiful Smiles Dental Inc., was owned by a dentist, according to a news release. She enrolled it in the Medicaid program by using a licensed dentist’s forged signatures on Medicaid enrollment paperwork without the dentist’s consent. Sanchez then billed Medicaid for nearly $80,000 in false and fraudulent claims, according to state charges.
∎ Rajiv Shah, 65, of Palm Beach Gardens was part of a $64 million scheme to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary durable medical equipment. As the owner and operator of ACC-Q Data, LLC, a medical billing company, he conspired with owners and operators of medical equipment companies to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare, advising them on how to avoid scrutiny and conceal fraud, according to federal authorities.
∎ Anthony Tursi, 39, of Boynton Beach, was charged for his role in billing Medicare $62 million for unnecessary genetic testing, according to a news release. Tursi owned a call center, according to the allegations, and used it to sell doctors’ orders for genetic tests to laboratories running deceptive telemarketing campaigns aimed at convincing Medicare beneficiaries to agree to the tests. His call center would chase down the beneficiaries’ physicians to sign orders for the tests, using false information to get them to sign the test orders, according to federal authorities.
∎ Lawrence Waldman, of Miami has agreed to pay $5 million to resolve charges that he was involved in a health care fraud kickback scheme involving medically unnecessary genetic and respiratory diagnostic testing services. As a sales representative at ASAP, he paid kickbacks to certain doctors in exchange for them signing requisition forms ordering the tests, according to a news release.
North, Central Florida
∎ Brandon Alan Aderhold, 35, of Glen St. Mary, Juan Stinus Brown, 58, of Fernandina Beach, Tabatha Nicole Keller, 41, of St. Augustine, and James Samuel Singleton, 41, of Orange Park are charged with collectively defrauding Medicaid out of about $479,800 by overbilling for transportation services between August 2020 and January 2023, according to allegations filed in state court.
∎ Tavares Tyrone Hankins, 46, of Jacksonville is charged with overbilling Medicaid for non-emergency transportation services, receiving $104,355 between May 18, 2021, and January 31, 2023, according to charges filed in state court.
∎ Sandra Peters, 45, of Saint Johns, was charged in connection with $10 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for wound allografts. Working in her capacity as a sales representative, she ordered and recommended patches made of human placentas that were unreasonable and unnecessary, using kickbacks and bribes, according to federal allegations filed in Arizona.
∎ Tymeka Eridder Spears, 46, of Jacksonville is charged with billing the state’s Medicaid program $47,158 for personal care services that were never provided to two Medicaid recipients in her capacity as owner of Trucare Health Services, according to a news release.
∎ Venessa K. Thomas, 38, of Ormond Beach is charged with making 2,696 claims for mental health services that were never rendered when she was working as a licensed mental health counselor at A Better Life and Community, LLC. She used her provider access to a managed care portal to get identification information belonging to Medicaid recipients, billing a total of nearly $262,000, according to a news release.
Tampa Bay, Panhandle
∎ Leo Corrigan, 56, of Tampa, was charged for his role in fraudulently billing Medicare for $7.5 million in over-the-counter COVID-19 and genetic tests. He received $1.7 million of the ill-gotten gains, federal officials said.
∎ Helen Crutcher Meadows, 49, of Tampa is charged with using her supervisory position at a West Virginia-based substance abuse recovery program, Lifehouse, Inc., to falsify time sheets for work not actually performed. The charges, routinely 32 hours of overtime each week for months, were subsequently submitted to federal and state health care programs for reimbursement, according to state charges.
∎ Dr. Scott Morrison, 58, of Pensacola Beach illegally prescribed at least 25,500 controlled substance pills, including over 22,000 opioid pills and over 3,000 stimulant pills, in his practice as an osteopathic doctor, according to the federal accusations filed.
∎ Leigh Tesar, 44, of Sarasota, Walter Presha, Jr., 51, of Ellenton and Koby Evans, 31, of Apollo Beach, are accused of fraudulently billing Medicare over 18 months for $118 million in wound care that way through companies they set up. The scheme helped pay $215,000 for Tampa Bay Buccaneers tickets and a luxury box suite at Raymond James Stadium, and over $400,000 for fine art, according to the the indictment
Anne Geggis is statewide reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA, reporting on health and senior issues. If you have news tips, please send them to ageggis@usatodayco.com. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at https://palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: A closer look at the most outrageous Florida health care fraud cases
Reporting by Anne Geggis, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Anne Geggis, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida | USA TODAY Network
