A Kansas businessman whose company owned an online platform for doctors' orders has been sentenced to 19 years in federal prison for his part in a scheme that billed Medicare and other federal health programs more than $1 billion for medically unnecessary braces and other items, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Brett Blackman, 43, of Johnson County, Kansas, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz in Miami to 228 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, court records show.
Blackman owned and ran HealthSplash, which bought Power Mobility Doctor Rx, known as DMERx, in September 2017, the Wichita station KWCH reported. Prosecutors described DMERx as an internet platform that turned out false doctors' orders for durable medical equipment, along with prescriptions for other products.
According to the department, Blackman and his co-conspirators pushed hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries to accept orthotic braces they did not need, then arranged for doctors working with telemedicine companies to sign bogus orders so others in the scheme could bill Medicare. The doctors were paid to sign without any meaningful contact with the patients, and in some cases with none at all. The conspirators also connected pharmacies, equipment suppliers and marketers with telemedicine companies that would take kickbacks and bribes for signed orders created on the platform, then took their own cut for the referrals.
Medicare was billed for braces for more than 346,000 beneficiaries, four apiece on average, and for more than 1,200 of them it was billed for at least 21 braces ordered through DMERx, the department said. Medicare and the other insurers paid out more than $450 million on the claims.
Testimony and evidence from an undercover agent who posed as a Medicare beneficiary traced the process at trial, according to the department. A call center overseas pressed the agent to accept several braces, and a doctor then signed orders for them on Blackman's platform. In one case, a doctor's order claimed tests that can only be performed in person, though the doctor never spoke with the agent. Prosecutors said the conspirators hid the scheme behind sham contracts and edited the orders to avoid Medicare audits, in part by deleting references to telemedicine.
A federal jury convicted Blackman in May of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with health care matters. The jurors found him not guilty on three other counts, according to the verdict recorded on the docket. Blackman had asked the judge to acquit him or order a new trial, and Leibowitz denied both requests on the day he imposed the sentence.
Gary Cox, who was DMERx's chief executive, was convicted in June 2025 and sentenced that December to 15 years in prison. He was ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution, the department said at the time.
"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," Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the department's National Fraud Enforcement Division said in Thursday's announcement. Investigators from the inspectors general at Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, the FBI and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service worked the case.
The department announced the creation of its Fraud Division on April 7 and says its work against fraud supports President Trump's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a governmentwide effort chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to root out fraud, waste and abuse in federal benefit programs. Its health care fraud strike force program, now made up of nine strike forces, has charged more than 6,200 defendants since 2007, who together billed federal health programs and private insurers more than $45 billion.
The court has scheduled a Feb. 5 hearing to determine Blackman's restitution and forfeiture, according to the docket.