A federal jury in Florida’s Middle District has convicted Sophie Dufort, 57, of Gainesville, of running a Medicare scheme that shipped orthopedic braces to elderly and disabled patients who had never been examined by a doctor. Prosecutors say the operation involved more than $8.6 million in claims submitted to Medicare, according to the Justice Department’s Oct. 27 announcement.
Dufort owned a durable medical equipment company and managed several others, the department said. Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division and U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe of the Middle District of Florida announced the verdict. The HHS Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated, and the inspector general’s office posted the case on its own enforcement list a day later.
How did braces reach patients who never asked for them?
According to the Justice Department, co-conspirators bought prescriptions for orthotic braces from purported marketing companies. Those companies used high-pressure telemarketing calls to collect Medicare beneficiaries’ personal information. Some paid practitioners to sign prescriptions without ever contacting or examining the patients, and others stole doctors’ credentials and forged the paperwork.
The braces were then shipped to beneficiaries who neither wanted nor needed them, the department said. When some of those patients asked to send the equipment back, they were told to throw it away or hand it down to someone else, which spared the defendants from having to repay Medicare.
For a Medicare patient, the practical question is what to do with a brace nobody ordered. The scheme depended on a beneficiary’s Medicare information and on equipment arriving with no doctor’s exam behind it, so an unrequested box, or a statement listing equipment that never came, is the signal to act. Photographing the item and keeping the shipping label and the statement gives investigators something to work with, and the report goes to the federal inspector general rather than back to the sender.
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What did the jury convict her of?
Dufort was convicted at trial on five counts: conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud; two counts of health care fraud; conspiracy to defraud the United States and to offer and pay illegal kickbacks; and offering and paying illegal kickbacks. The verdict is a conviction, not a sentence, and no prison term has been imposed.
The statutory ceilings are 20 years for the conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, 10 years for each health care fraud count and for the kickback count, and 5 years for the conspiracy to defraud the United States, the department said. Sentencing is scheduled for January 2027, and a judge will decide the penalty under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. A maximum is a limit on what a judge may impose, not a forecast of what will happen.
A medical expert testified at trial that using these combinations of braces could be “very dangerous” for the elderly Medicare population, the department said. The release does not say that any particular patient was hurt.
Is $8.6 million what Medicare lost?
Not on the record so far. The department describes the figure as more than $8.6 million in fraudulent claims submitted to Medicare. That measures what the group billed. The release does not state how much Medicare actually paid out, does not give a loss figure, and does not set a restitution amount, which a court would decide later.
The case sits inside a much larger effort. The Justice Department says its Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program, which now has nine strike forces, has charged more than 6,200 defendants who collectively billed federal health care programs and private insurers over $45 billion since 2007. Medicare fraud of this kind is paid for by the program’s trust funds and, in the end, by taxpayers and beneficiaries through premiums and program costs.
The department also said it created its Fraud Division on April 7, and that CMS and the inspector general are working to hold providers accountable.
Where is an unordered brace reported?
The inspector general’s fraud reporting page takes complaints online through its tips portal, or by phone at 1-800-HHS-TIPS if the form will not load. A report should include contact details for the business involved, a plain account of what arrived and when, how the beneficiary learned of it, and any supporting records such as billing statements or photos.
The office cautions that not every submission leads to an investigation and that it cannot contact every person who files. It also says a complaint is not the route to a refund or restored benefits; anyone seeking personal relief is told to pursue other administrative or judicial remedies.
Checking each Medicare statement line by line is the other half of the job. Charges for braces or other equipment that were never ordered, never received or never prescribed by a doctor who actually examined the patient are the pattern prosecutors described in this case.
Got a brace nobody ordered?
The detail that is easy to miss in this case is where it began: a phone call that pulled personal information out of a Medicare beneficiary. Anyone who gave details to a telemarketer, or whose number has been used for equipment never ordered, has an exposed identity that can be pointed at bank accounts and credit next.
Reporting the brace handles the Medicare side only. Scam-Proof Your Accounts in a Weekend covers the accounts around it, including how to freeze your credit at all three bureaus, free by federal law, and a family code word for fake grandchild-in-trouble calls. Its ten moves run in the order that protects the most money first, in about four hours.
Lock the accounts a brace scammer could reach with Scam-Proof Your Accounts in a Weekend →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
