Americans have become so familiar with junk mail and spam calls that target seniors one would think most of those scams would be disregarded. Yet when Gary Cox collaborated with those very same marketers, the result was a $1 billion dollar health care scheme – the consequences being not only potential physical harm and denial of legitimate benefits to patients, but hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the U.S. taxpayer. Everyone is a victim in this scheme. Except Gary Cox.
Cox targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries who provided their personally identifiable information and agreed to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, pain creams, and other items through misleading mailers, television advertisements, and calls from offshore call centers. Cox and his co-conspirators owned, controlled, and operated DMERx, an internet-based platform that generated false and fraudulent doctors’ orders for these items. He connected pharmacies, durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers, and marketers with telemedicine companies that would accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctors’ orders transmitted using the DMERx platform.
The fraudulent doctors’ orders generated by DMERx falsely represented that a doctor had examined and treated the Medicare beneficiaries when in fact the doctors were paid for their signature on the order. No appointments necessary. The DME suppliers and pharmacies that paid illegal kickbacks in exchange for these doctors’ orders billed Medicare and other insurers more than $1 billion in fraudulent claims resulting in Medicare and the insurers reimbursing $360 million in unnecessary DME’s.
On June 6, 2025, Cox was found guilty of health care fraud.
Shout out to the FBI Miami special agents worked with investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs in this case.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Ex-healthcare software company executive faces up to 60 years in prison, prosecutors say” published by Miami Local 10 on June 6, 2025.
A jury convicted Gary Cox, the former chief executive officer of Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC, on Tuesday of six crimes related to a $1 billion fraud conspiracy. “The defendant orchestrated a scheme to defraud government health care benefit programs on a massive scale,” Attorney Matthew R. Galeotti, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said.
Federal prosecutors accused Cox of running DMERx, an internet-based platform that FBI Miami agents reported transmitted doctor’s fraudulent orders, which were motivated by kickbacks and bribes. “Fraud of this kind wastes taxpayer dollars and increases the cost of healthcare for all Americans,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Hayden P. O’Byrne said.
