Two Healthcare Executives Convicted for Exploiting Elderly Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries in $34 Million Fraud Scheme
A Miami federal jury convicted two healthcare executives on Dec. 22, 2025 for their roles in a scheme that resulted in the submission of approximately $34 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare Advantage plans for medically unnecessary durable medical equipment, including back, knee, shoulder, and ankle braces.
2/17/202610 min read
MIAMI – A Miami federal jury convicted two healthcare executives on Dec. 22, 2025 for their roles in a scheme that resulted in the submission of approximately $34 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare Advantage plans for medically unnecessary durable medical equipment, including back, knee, shoulder, and ankle braces.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Michael Kochen, 42, and Sandro Herek, 56, targeted Medicare Advantage beneficiaries through deceptive telemarketing practices, pressuring elderly individuals to accept medical equipment they did not need — and in some cases, did not want.
Over the course of the scheme, more than $17 million was paid by Medicare Advantage plans on fraudulent claims.
“This case was simple at its core,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida.
“The defendants exploited trust and age, using pressure tactics and fake medical justifications to push unnecessary equipment onto elderly patients who deserved better. The jury saw through it. This verdict sends a clear message that schemes targeting seniors and abusing our healthcare system will be met with accountability and real consequences.”
Kochen owned dozens of companies that sold durable medical equipment supplies, such as braces.
Herek oversaw and directed overseas call centers, including in Egypt and other foreign jurisdictions, which aggressively cold called Medicare beneficiaries without prior requests for services.
Call-center representatives repeatedly contacted beneficiaries — often after initial refusals — and used high pressure tactics to induce them to accept braces regardless of medical necessity.
Marketing scripts falsely suggested that the braces would be provided at no cost to the beneficiaries.
Evidence further showed that physicians frequently issued standardized or boilerplate medical authorizations for braces based solely on call recordings rather than individualized medical evaluations.
In many instances, doctors did not speak with beneficiaries at all.
When calls did occur, they were often brief, lasted only minutes, and did not include a meaningful assessment of medical necessity.
Kochen paid kickbacks to telemedicine companies to obtain prescription orders for braces for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, which were then used to submit claims for unnecessary equipment.
Michael Kochen was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, six counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks, and three counts of payment of health care kickbacks.
Sandro Herek was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud, one count of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay and receive health care kickbacks, and three counts of receiving health care kickbacks.
Kochen and Herek each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud conviction, 10 years for each health care fraud conviction, five years for the kickback conspiracy conviction, and 10 years for each substantive kickback-related conviction.
The sentencing hearing in this case is scheduled for March 25.
A federal district court judge will determine sentencing after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
U.S. Attorney Reding Quiñones; Acting Special Agent in Charge Ricardo M. Carcas of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, (HHS-OIG), Miami Regional Office; and Special Agent in Charge Brett D. Skiles of the FBI, Miami Field Office, made the announcement.
HHS-OIG Miami and FBI Miami are investigating the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Roger Cruz, David Turken and Robert F. Moore are prosecuting the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra Demici is handling asset forfeiture.
Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 24-cr-20078.
....sounds like a presidential pardon is coming right up - these guys are straight out of the Donald Trump, "How To Do Business" handbook
A South Florida man who owned a chain of medical equipment companies and an associate were found guilty on Monday of committing healthcare fraud by paying bribes to generate patients so they could bill $34 million to the federal Medicare program for unnecessary services.
Michael Kochen, 42, of Aventura, and Sandro Herek, 55, of Coral Springs, received more than $17 million in payments from the taxpayer-funded Medicare system in a healthcare fraud conspiracy spanning a decade, the 12-person jury found in Miami federal court.
Kochen’s chain of about 30 companies — which operated under the CLADD Group LLC in North Miami — sold durable medical equipment such as knee, shoulder and wrist braces to patients who were referred by doctors affiliated with Herek’s telemedicine business, VirtualNet.
Kochen’s father, Marcelo Kochen, 69, of Bay Harbor Islands, was also charged in the conspiracy case but did not stand trial because of poor health.
Both Michael Kochen and Herek face up to 20 years in prison after being convicted of the main conspiracy charge and several other kickback counts.
During closing arguments, prosecutor Roger Cruz told jurors Michael Kochen was the “foreman of the fraud factory that he and his father ran out of Miami, selling braces.”
“But if you really think about it, they weren’t selling braces,” Cruz said.
“They were selling lies.”
Michael Kochen’s attorney Jayne Weintraub argued that the evidence didn’t prove that Michael Kochen was committing fraud.
“This is a healthcare fraud case. Think about it. A fraud. Misrepresentations. Lies. I’m sure you expected to see Michael Kochen on a phone lying to somebody to get something,” Weintraub said. “That’s not what you saw at all. At all. The contrary. You saw Michael acting in good faith. .... You saw Michael Kochen hiring healthcare lawyers.”
According to an indictment, the Kochens were accused of paying kickbacks to Herek so that his telemedicine company, VirtualNet, would refer patients “without regard to the medical necessity for the prescribed [durable medical equipment] or whether the DME was eligible for Medicare reimbursement.”
The objective of paying kickbacks to Herek and other operators of telemedicine companies was to obtain doctors’ prescription orders for patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage Plans, the indictment says.
Those plans are operated by private insurers and reimbursed by the federal government under the Medicare system for the elderly and indigent.
To generate a stream of patients for Kochen’s companies, Herek and others “employed call centers that used deceptive and misleading marketing tactics to recruit Medicare Advantage beneficiaries for medically unnecessary DME,” according to the indictment.
The healthcare fraud trial, which started on Nov. 3 before U.S. District Judge Donald Graham, almost didn’t get underway.
In late September, before the trial was to begin the following month, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a federal prosecutor in Miami who was in charge of the healthcare fraud case.
Bondi terminated Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Rosenzweig — while he was observing the Jewish New Year on Sept. 23 — because he had posted critical blog commentary about President Donald Trump during his first term while Rosensweig was working for a law firm in Washington, D.C.
As a result, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said it was not prepared to proceed without him.
Fellow prosecutor David Turken asked Judge Graham to delay the start of the trial until early November, saying if he didn’t grant the request, the office would consider dropping the charges.
Graham kept to his initial schedule to start the trial with jury selection on Oct. 6, but he delayed the opening statements and the government’s presentation of evidence until Nov. 3. Graham’s decision appeared to salvage the healthcare fraud trial, giving the U.S. Attorney’s Office extra time to replace Rosenzweig with prosecutors Cruz and Robert Moore so they could get up to speed alongside Turken.
At trial, Michael Kochen was represented by defense lawyers Jayne Weintraub, Christopher Cavallo and Jonathan Etra. Herek’s defense lawyer was David Tarras.
Bondi’s firing of federal prosecutor in Miami threatened to derail big Medicare fraud trial
A judge’s decision appeared to salvage the Medicare fraud trial.
Oct. 3, 2025
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired a federal prosecutor in Miami last week because he had posted critical blog commentary about Donald Trump during his first term as president — a politically fraught decision that nearly derailed an upcoming trial.
Bondi’s firing of Will Rosenzweig threatened to upend the trial of two Medicare fraud defendants set to start on Monday because he was the lead prosecutor and the U.S. Attorney’s Office said it was not prepared to proceed without him.
A fellow prosecutor involved in the case asked a federal judge to delay the start of the trial until early November, saying if he didn’t grant his request, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would consider dropping the healthcare fraud and conspiracy charges against them.
Normally, when federal prosecutors weigh whether to dismiss an indictment before trial, it’s for lack of evidence — not for lack of a prosecutor to try the case — underscoring perhaps the unintended consequences of Bondi’s firing of Rosenzweig on Sept. 23 while he was observing the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, with his family.
At a key hearing on Friday, U.S. District Judge Donald Graham granted part of the prosecutor’s request. Graham kept to his initial schedule to start the trial with jury selection on Monday, but he delayed the opening statements and government’s presentation of evidence until Nov. 3.
Graham’s decision appeared to salvage the Medicare fraud trial, giving the U.S. Attorney’s Office extra time to replace Rosenzweig and bring the new prosecutor up to speed on the case.
Until Friday, it had been touch and go.
In a court filing on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Turken told Graham that if he “denies this motion” for a delay, the prosecutor “may recommend dismissal” of the indictment against the two defendants.
“There is currently no one at the U.S. Attorney’s Office who is sufficiently familiar with the discovery and evidence in this case to refute the expected unmeritorious discovery allegations by defense counsel at trial,” Turken wrote, adding that “the [federal] government shutdown [on Wednesday] is further complicating the government’s ability to prepare this trial.
“Dimissal of this matter would not be in the interest of justice,” added Turken, who has been involved in the case since the defendants were indicted by a grand jury last year.
Immediately after Rosenzweig’s firing by Bondi last week, Turken asked Graham to delay the trial until March of next year. The judge denied it, saying the trial will begin on Oct. 6 with jury selection but allowed for the opening statements and trial evidence to get underway two weeks later, Oct. 20. Turken asked the judge to reconsider, seeking to postpone the trial another two weeks, until Nov. 3, which the judge did in Friday’s hearing.
Millions of dollars in false billing alleged
Prosecutors, who are alleging millions of dollars in false insurance billing for medical equipment, telemedicine and other services, are expected to present more than 40 government witnesses and 400 exhibits. The trial will last more than a month.
Defense attorneys for the two defendants, Michael Kochen and Sandro Herek, opposed a continuation of the trial, noting that the federal prosecutors had already requested a long delay after Rosenzweig’s firing and Judge Graham denied it, though he allowed for a short two-week postponement for opening statements and trial evidence. A third defendant, Marcello Kochen, will be tried separately because of an illness.
“The Government’s position is that it will not be ready for trial, as currently scheduled,” the Kochens’ defense attorneys, Jayne Weintraub, Christopher Cavallo and Jonathan Etra, wrote in a court filing on Thursday. “That was the same position in the original motion. For that reason alone, the motion for reconsideration should be denied.”
Herek’s defense lawyer, David Tarras, said that while he “empathizes with the unexpected termination of Will Rosenzweig and the administrative difficulties this most certainly causes for the Government, Sandro Herek should not have to suffer for it.”
A prominent defense attorney who is not involved in the Medicare fraud case said the turn of events was highly unusual in federal court, but that federal prosecutors should not be allowed to delay the trial any further because of the circumstances of Rosenzweig’s firing.
“The government tells defendants all the time that ‘decisions have consequences,’ “ Miami lawyer David O. Markus told the Miami Herald. “They made their decision with respect to their trial lawyer. The consequence is simple: The trial goes on.
“State court manages prosecutor turnover every day, and federal courts can too,” he added.
Bondi fires prosecutor on Rosh Hashana
Rosenzweig took a short break from his work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami to observe the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, last week.
But he noticed something was amiss when his office-issued mobile phone wasn’t working. He called the office to find out what was wrong.
Rosenzweig soon learned his phone was shut off because Bondi fired him. He did not see her terse Sept. 23 email dismissing him on Rosh Hashana — making the 39-year-old lawyer the third federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida to be summarily fired by the Bondi-led Justice Department since Trump started his second term as president in January.
But Rosenzweig — considered to be among the rising prosecutors in the office — wasn’t fired because he had been associated with the criminal investigations of Trump by the Justice Department’s special counsel during the prior Biden administration. That was why two other respected federal prosecutors in the Miami office were abruptly terminated this year.
Rather, Rosenzweig was fired, according to multiple sources, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were recently brought to the attention of the Justice Department.
Rosenzweig, who obtained his bachelor’s and law degrees from Cornell University, joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami in September 2020 — toward the end of Trump’s first term before he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.
Rosenzweig worked on dozens of complex cases as a prosecutor in the economic crimes section, which focuses on healthcare fraud, money laundering and other financial schemes. Of late, Rosenzweig was deeply involved in the Medicare fraud case that was scheduled for trial in early October.
His termination shocked several colleagues, who took note of the terrible timing and pettiness of his firing, calling it another “frogmarch.” They also said his loss would be a significant blow to an office that has witnessed a “brain drain” of veteran talent over the past year.
Other firings
In late January, Miami federal prosecutor Michael Thakur, 46, a Harvard Law School graduate who worked on the documents case accusing Trump of withholding top secret materials at his Palm Beach estate, was fired along with dozens of others in the Justice Department who were members of the special counsel’s team.
In addition to Thakur, Anne McNamara, a former federal prosecutor in the Miami office before joining Smith’s team in Washington, was also terminated.
The Justice Department’s rolling purges of lawyers and employees who participated in the two federal criminal cases against Trump — which Smith dismissed after Trump won the 2024 presidential election — are expected to continue in Washington and other regions of the country.
