Christopher Harwood

Introduction

Christopher Harwood, 44, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the owner of a telemedicine company called TelevisitMD, was sentenced on October 23, 2026 to 20 years in prison for organizing and leading a $46.2 million Medicare fraud conspiracy that spanned more than six years, and was ordered to pay $17,942,402 in restitution to Medicare and $10,431,463 in forfeiture. Harwood, who pleaded guilty in March 2026 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, built the scheme on a telemedicine shell: aggressive telemarketing campaigns drew Medicare patients to accept orthotic braces and genetic tests they did not need, while doctors paid by Harwood signed the orders without real medical relationships with the patients or meaningful telemedicine interactions. The Justice Department’s announcement credits the sentence to a joint FBI Miami and HHS-OIG investigation, and describes a man who stood on both sides of the fraud — selling doctors’ orders downstream while also owning the DME companies that billed Medicare directly.

Background Information

TelevisitMD was the front. According to court documents, Harwood and his co-conspirators targeted Medicare patients through telemarketing, inducing them to accept orthotic braces and genetic testing they did not need, then paid doctors to approve the orders. Those doctors, the release states, did not follow Medicare’s rules for telemedicine visits, did not have real medical relationships with the patients, and often signed orders for braces and genetic tests without any meaningful interaction with the patients at all. Harwood then sold the signed doctors’ orders to durable medical equipment (DME) supply companies, laboratories and marketers who were part of the scheme — and, in a second layer, he also owned and operated multiple Florida-based DME supply companies of his own, which he used to bill Medicare millions of dollars for orthotic braces Medicare patients did not want or need.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Harwood pleaded guilty in March 2026 to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on October 23, 2026.

In total, Harwood caused $46.2 million in false and fraudulent claims to be submitted to Medicare; Medicare paid $17.9 million on those claims, and Harwood personally profited more than $10.4 million from the scheme — the numbers the 20-year sentence, the $17.9 million restitution order and the $10.4 million forfeiture are built to match. The six-year span of the conspiracy meant the sham-telemedicine pipeline ran from roughly the pandemic-era expansion of remote care into 2026, with TelevisitMD’s paid-doctor orders feeding a downstream market of DME suppliers and labs that the government describes as knowing participants. The guilty plea in March 2026 to two counts — health care fraud conspiracy and wire fraud — resolved the case without trial, leaving the sentencing hearing as the stage where the government’s accounting became a judgment.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The sentence was announced jointly by Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida, FBI Miami Special Agent in Charge Brett Skiles, and HHS-OIG Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Miranda Bennett — and the release situates the case inside the department’s newer enforcement machinery, noting the April 7 creation of the Fraud Division and its alignment with the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. The department’s release also places Harwood’s case in the larger statistical frame: the Health Care Fraud Strike Force program, now nine strike forces across the country, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since 2007. For the Medicare beneficiaries whose identities and insurance numbers powered the scheme, the consequence arrived as unwanted braces and unnecessary genetic tests billed in their names — the human texture the sentencing numbers stand for.

Current Status

Harwood, 44, is beginning a 20-year federal prison sentence imposed October 23, 2026, with $17,942,402 in restitution owed to Medicare and $10,431,463 in forfeiture ordered. His March 2026 guilty plea to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud is a final conviction; the sentencing was announced the day it was imposed, and the release does not indicate an appeal. Trial Attorney Owen Dunn of the Fraud Division’s Health Care Fraud Section is prosecuting the case through its remaining phases, which would include the collection of restitution and forfeiture.

Impact on Their Career/Life

TelevisitMD — the company whose name carried the scheme — and Harwood’s multiple DME supply companies are the wreckage of the case: businesses built to generate fraudulent claims do not survive their owner’s 20-year sentence, and the more than $10.4 million in personal profit the government says he extracted is matched by the forfeiture order against it. At 44, Harwood faces the prospect of leaving federal custody in his sixties, with restitution owed for the remainder of his supervised life. The case also stands as the template of the telemedicine-fraud era: a telemarketing engine, a roster of paid doctors signing without examinations, a resale market for signed orders, and an owner billing through his own DME companies — all of it priced, in the end, at $46.2 million in false claims and two decades in prison.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “Telemedicine Company Owner Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for $46M Medicare Fraud Scheme,” October 23, 2026 — source