Brett Blackman

Introduction

Brett Blackman is a 43-year-old Johnson County, Kansas, software executive who was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison for his role in operating an internet platform that generated false doctors’ orders and prescriptions to defraud Medicare and other federal health care benefit programs out of more than $1 billion. The Department of Justice announced the sentence on October 15, 2026, stating Blackman was sentenced the day before. A federal jury convicted him in April 2026, after a 23-day trial, of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make false statements in connection with health care matters .

Background Information

Blackman owned, controlled, and served as chief executive of HealthSplash, a Kansas health care technology company that acquired Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC — known as DMERx — in September 2017. DMERx was an internet-based platform that generated doctors’ orders for durable medical equipment and prescriptions for other items. According to the Justice Department, the platform’s output was fraudulent at its core: doctors were paid to sign orders without any meaningful interaction with the purported patients, and in some cases with no interaction at all, while the paperwork falsely represented that a doctor had examined and treated each beneficiary .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Blackman was convicted by a federal jury in April 2026 after a 23-day trial and sentenced to 19 years in prison on October 14, 2026. His restitution and forfeiture obligations will be determined by the court at a later date, and the account below comes from the Justice Department’s sentencing announcement.

According to court documents and trial evidence, Blackman and his co-conspirators connected pharmacies, DME suppliers, and marketers with telemedicine companies that accepted illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctors’ orders created through the DMERx platform, taking a cut of the referrals for themselves. The scheme targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries across the United States to get them to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces and other items. Trial testimony from an undercover agent who posed as a Medicare beneficiary traced the full assembly line: a foreign call center pushing the “patient” to agree to multiple braces, followed by a doctor signing bogus orders through Blackman’s platform — including an order claiming in-person tests that were never performed .

The scale was extraordinary. The DME suppliers and pharmacies paying kickbacks for the DMERx orders billed Medicare and other insurers more than $1 billion, and Medicare and the other insurers paid more than $450 million on those claims. Medicare was fraudulently billed for orthotic braces for more than 346,000 beneficiaries — an average of four braces per beneficiary — and was billed for at least 21 orthotics prescribed through DMERx to over 1,200 beneficiaries. Prosecutors said the scheme was concealed through sham contracts and by manipulating the doctors’ orders to avoid Medicare audits, including by stripping out references to telemedicine .

Public Reaction and Consequences

Justice Department officials framed the 19-year sentence as a warning to the telemedicine fraud industry. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division said the Department and its partners “dismantled one of the largest telemedicine fraud schemes ever,” and that Blackman’s scheme “lured hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled Americans into a sophisticated international telemarketing system with one goal: stealing as much as possible from the Medicare trust fund.” Veterans Affairs Inspector General Cheryl L. Mason said the sentence delivered “a decisive warning” to anyone exploiting VA programs, and FBI Miami’s Brett D. Skiles said the scheme had undermined the integrity of the health care system .

The consequences stack heavily: a 19-year prison term, four felony conspiracy convictions, and restitution and forfeiture obligations still to be set. His co-defendant Gary Cox was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2025 .

Current Status

As of the October 15, 2026 announcement, Blackman, 43, had been sentenced to 19 years in federal prison, with his restitution and forfeiture obligations to be determined by the court at a later date. The case was prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida by the Justice Department’s Fraud Division health care fraud section, following investigation by HHS-OIG, the FBI, VA-OIG, and DCIS. No appeal was reported in the coverage consulted .

Impact on Their Career/Life

Blackman’s fall ends a run as a health care CEO that the Justice Department now describes as the orchestration of one of the largest telemedicine fraud schemes ever dismantled. The DMERx model — software that mass-produced doctors’ orders for equipment patients did not need, signed by doctors who never saw the patients — was the engine, and the 19-year sentence prices that engine at nearly two decades of confinement. With more than $450 million actually paid out on over $1 billion in false billing, and 346,000 beneficiaries whose Medicare files were turned into brace orders, his restitution and forfeiture hearings remain the next legal chapter. For the broader industry, the case is now a named exhibit in the federal government’s argument that platform-enabled prescribing fraud carries kingpin-level consequences .

Sources

U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, “Owner of Health Care Software Company Sentenced to 19 Years in Prison for $1B Medicare Fraud,” October 15, 2026 — source
Townhall, “Kansas CEO Sentenced to 19 Years in $1B Medicare Telemedicine Fraud,” October 16, 2026 — source
WIBW, “Kansas man sentenced to 19 years in prison for $1 billion Medicare fraud,” October 15, 2026 — source