A Tarpon Springs man pleaded guilty on Friday, November 13, 2026, to running a $42 million fraud on Medicare built on false claims for medical braces and cancer genetic testing that patients did not want or need, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Chad Monroe, 48, of Tarpon Springs, Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of wire fraud, and also pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan, according to court documents and statements made in court.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Tarpon Springs is a Gulf Coast city in Pinellas County, in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. The guilty plea was announced on Friday, November 13, by the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs in press release number 26-1358, and it resolves the federal case against Monroe himself; the department's account describes co-conspirators whose cases are not detailed in the announcement.
Three companies, more than $26 million in false claims
According to the Justice Department, Monroe and his co-conspirators opened three durable medical equipment (DME) companies — Maksix Medical Products Inc., Orthotech Atlanta, LLC, and 1st Choice Medical Supply LLC — and used them to submit over $26 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans, and TRICARE, the health program for U.S. service members and their families.
The equipment at the centre of the scheme was ordinary, everyday medical gear: knee braces, wrist braces, ankle braces and back braces, together with cancer genetic testing. The department said the claims were submitted for beneficiaries who did not want or need the equipment or the tests — the pattern prosecutors describe in DME schemes, where the paperwork says a product was medically necessary and the patient, in reality, never asked for it.
Hidden ownership and kickbacks for doctors' orders
Monroe directed co-conspirators to lie on Medicare enrollment documents to hide his own ownership of, and role at, the companies, the Justice Department said. That concealment matters in Medicare billing: a person who is barred from, or trying to stay invisible to, the program cannot openly own the companies that bill it, so prosecutors say the ownership was disguised on the forms Medicare relies on.
To generate the doctors' orders that Medicare requires before it pays for equipment or testing, Monroe paid purported telemedicine companies illegal kickbacks, according to the department. He also, through his company Health and Life Networking LLC, sold doctors' orders for genetic testing to co-conspirator laboratories, which paid him over $15 million in illegal kickbacks — the single largest money flow attributed to Monroe personally in the announcement.
A fraudulent PPP loan on top of the health care scheme
Separately, Monroe directed a co-conspirator to submit a fraudulent PPP loan application for over $30,000, in which they lied about, among other things, the ownership of 1st Choice Medical Supply LLC in order to qualify for the loan, the Justice Department said. PPP loans were the federal pandemic-era program meant to help real businesses keep paying their workers; prosecutors say the same hidden-ownership lie used on Medicare forms was used again to obtain that money.
A 47-foot yacht, an Escalade — and a government seizure
Monroe used the proceeds of the fraud to fund a lavish lifestyle, the department said, including buying a 47-foot yacht valued at over $600,000 called “The Rogue Shark,” a Cadillac Escalade, and other luxury vehicles. In connection with the charges, the government seized the yacht and more than $1 million, according to the announcement.
Medicare is paid for by workers' payroll taxes and by the premiums of the seniors and disabled Americans enrolled in it — including thousands of Punjabi and South Asian seniors in Florida and across the United States. Every false claim for an unwanted brace or an unneeded genetic test is billed to that shared fund, and federal strike forces say schemes of exactly this kind are a major reason enforcement has intensified.
Who investigated, who prosecuted — and what happens next
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division; HHS-OIG Special Agent in Charge Isaac M. Bledsoe; FBI Tampa Field Office Special Agent in Charge Rodney Crawford; DCIS Acting Special Agent in Charge Nakia M. Alexander of the Southeast Field Office; and IRS Criminal Investigation Acting Special Agent in Charge Charles Miller of the Florida Field Office. The case was investigated by HHS-OIG, the FBI, DCIS and IRS-CI, and is being prosecuted by Assistant Deputy Chief Catherine Wagner, Deputy Chief D. Keith Clouser and Trial Attorney Paul J. Koob of the National Fraud Enforcement Division's Health Care Fraud Section.
A sentencing date has not been set. Monroe faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the health care fraud conspiracy count and 30 years in prison on the wire fraud count; a federal district court judge will determine the actual sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, the department said. The wider context, according to the Justice Department, is its Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, which says it has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $45 billion since 2007.