Two Florida residents were sentenced to prison on Friday for their involvement in a scheme that defrauded $34.8 million from the federal health program Medicare, according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Kenneth Charles Kessler III, 43 years old and a resident of Miami, received a sentence of 33 months in prison, while Michael Andrew Gómez, also 43 years old and a neighbor of Miramar, was sentenced to 24 months.
Both had pleaded guilty in May of this year to a charge of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
According to court documents, the two men were owners and operators of seven medical equipment supply companies based in Florida, through which they submitted false claims to Medicare for orthopedic braces that patients neither needed nor had requested.
The mechanism of the fraud included paying bribes to obtain fraudulently signed medical orders, with which they then sent orthopedic devices to Medicare beneficiaries across the country.
To evade the payment suspensions imposed by Medicare when irregularities were detected, Kessler and Gómez rotated billing among their multiple companies, making it more difficult to uncover the scheme.
Kessler pocketed over 1.4 million dollars personally, while Gómez made profits exceeding 2.3 million dollars.
“These fraudsters billed Medicare $34.8 million for devices that patients neither needed nor requested, and now they are facing the consequences,” stated Colin M. McDonald, Deputy Attorney General of the National Fraud Enforcement Division of the Department of Justice.
"They paid bribes for fake medical orders, rotated billing among several companies to evade payment suspensions, and lined their pockets with millions that belonged to American taxpayers," he added.
On his part, the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, was clear: "Medicare is not a blank check for fraudsters. If they steal from our health programs, we will find them, prosecute them, and hold them accountable."
The case was investigated by the FBI, through its field office in Miami, and by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The conviction comes as part of a broader federal crackdown on healthcare fraud in South Florida, a region regarded as the national epicenter of this type of crime.
In June, several individuals from South Florida were accused of similar schemes involving orthopedic devices and Medicare.
The 2026 nationwide health care fraud operation was the largest in the history of the Department of Justice: it resulted in charges against 455 defendants for false claims exceeding $6.5 billion, involving 56 federal prosecutors' offices and 45 state attorneys general.
Since 2007, the Health Care Fraud Strike Force of the Department of Justice has prosecuted more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed over 45 billion dollars to federal health programs and private insurers, a figure that reflects the magnitude of the problem nationwide.
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