Durable Medical Equipment Owner Sentenced for $59M Medicare Fraud and Kickbacks

A federal court in the Southern District of Texas has sentenced Patrick Cassells, 65, of Fulshear, Texas, to 90 months in prison for his role in a comprehensive Medicare fraud and kickback scheme that resulted in more than $59.9 million in false claims being submitted to the federal health program. Cassells owned and operated multiple durable medical equipment (DME) companies and used those entities to bill Medicare for medically unnecessary orthotic braces by concealing his involvement and disguising illegal referral payments as “marketing leads.”

According to court documents, Cassells paid illegal kickbacks to co-conspirators who supplied him with signed doctors’ orders for braces, despite the fact that the prescribing physicians had not evaluated or treated the beneficiaries. Medicare ultimately paid more than $27 million in response to these fraudulent claims, with proceeds used by Cassells to purchase personal luxury vehicles and other assets. In addition to his prison sentence, the court ordered Cassells to pay over $25 million in restitution and forfeiture and to surrender multiple properties and vehicles tied to the fraud. The prosecution was carried out by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, with investigative support from HHS-OIG, the FBI, and the Texas Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, underscoring government commitment to combating healthcare fraud involving durable medical equipment.