SC federal judge seeks arrest of billion-dollar Medicare kingpin fraudster in Philippines

A South Carolina federal judge on Tuesday ordered the immediate arrest of the kingpin of a billion dollar Medicare fraud scheme, part of which took place in the Palmetto State.

“I don’t see the defendant today,” said U.S. Judge Joe Anderson, looking around a sparsely populated courtroom on the third floor of the federal courthouse in Columbia.

It was a pre-sentence hearing for defendant Herb Kimble, the mastermind of a long-running, widespread Medicare fraud scheme that cheated the federal government out of $1 billion in fraudulent Medicaid payments from 2014 to 2019.

In 2019, Kimble pleaded guilty in a plea deal to conspiracy to commit health care fraud, violating the anti-kickback statute and defrauding the government.

As part of that deal, Kimble had agreed to pay $40 million in restitution when he is sentenced, but authorities recently learned that Kimble only has $27 million available. He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 19, and Judge Anderson wanted on Tuesday to determine Kimble’s financial status and had ordered him to appear in court.

But on Tuesday, Kimble was in the Philippines, an island archipelago nation in the Pacific Ocean about 7,000 miles from the U.S. The Philippines will not extradite defendants in health-care fraud cases, prosecutors have said in court documents.

Kimble, a U.S. citizen, just wasn’t any white collar defendant. In government documents, he is described as “the architect of a substantial and international healthcare fraud scheme,” a conspiracy that was “one of the largest healthcare fraud schemes in the history of the United States.”

Kimble’s attorney, Jim Griffin of Columbia, told Anderson that he was in communication with Kimble, who will be coming to court in Columbia in the next few weeks.

“He is coming. I have been assured,” said Griffin.

That wasn’t quite what Anderson wanted to hear.

On a motion from Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Bower, Anderson said he would immediately issue a bench warrant — a written order authorizing the arrest of Kimble by federal authorities anytime at any place in the country.

Anderson also granted a motion by Bower to revoke a $5 million bond Kimble had posted in 2019 when he was arrested..

Since 2019, Kimble has been free, providing evidence to federal authorities and testifying in various criminal proceedings around the country against his former conspirators.

In his 2019 guilty plea, Kimble agreed to pay $40 million in restitution to the government for his part in the scheme.

In a 2022 sentencing memo, federal prosecutors recommended probation for Kimble because of his cooperation in the case and because he was going to pay $40 million in restitution when he was sentenced. Because of his help, the government was able to charge some 80 defendants with health care offenses, prosecutions that otherwise would not have been made, they wrote.

Moreover, Kimble voluntarily came to the United States to reveal the entire scheme and to cooperate with investigators, travel he did not have to make because of the Philippines’ extradition policy, the 2022 memo said

Call centers owned by Kimble in the Philippines were vital cogs in his scheme.

TV and online advertisements encouraged people to call Kimble’s call centers, which screened the callers to make sure they were Medicare-eligible. Then, the call centers linked the eligible consumers up with doctors who wrote medically unnecessary prescriptions without seeing the patient, according to prosecutors.

The scheme involved selling cheap, Chinese-made and medically unnecessary arm, neck, leg and back braces to thousands of mostly elderly people, who paid for them with Medicare, according to law enforcement.

At its height, the scheme included doctors, shipping companies and medical equipment companies that went on to bill Medicare “millions upon millions of dollars,” federal officials said. Numerous bank accounts and straw companies managed the flow of money.

The scheme was based in South Carolina, Florida, California, New Jersey, Texas and Pennsylvania, officials said.

One South Carolinian arrested in the scheme, Andrew Chmiel of Mount Pleasant, was sentenced to 108 months in federal prison in March of this year after pleading guilty to Medicare fraud. He is scheduled to be released from prison in 2032.

In court on Tuesday, discussing the absent Kimble, Judge Anderson looked at federal prosecutor Bower and said, paraphrasing a famous movie line by a NASA astronaut during the Apollo 13 crisis, “Houston, do we have a problem?”

“We do have a problem,” Bower replied. “At least for today.”