Kansas man pleads guilty to $1B fraud scheme
By HME News Staff
Updated 8:52 AM CST, Thu February 27, 2025
TOPEKA, Kan. – Gregory Schreck, of Johnson County, Kan., has pleaded guilty to operating an internet-based platform named DMERx that generated false doctor orders to defraud Medicare and other federal health care benefit programs of more than $1 billion. According to court documents, Shreck and his co-conspirators targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries to provide their personally identifiable information and agree to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, pain creams and other items through misleading mailers, television advertisements and calls from offshore call centers. Schreck, a vice president of the company that operated DMERx, admitted that he offered to connect pharmacies, durable medical equipment suppliers and marketers with telemedicine companies that would accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctor orders that were transmitted using the DMERx platform. The DME suppliers and pharmacies that paid illegal kickbacks in exchange for these doctor orders generated through DMERx billed Medicare and other insurers more than $1 billion. Medicare and the insurers paid more than $360 million based on these false and fraudulent claims. Schreck pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
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