SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — They lived a life of luxury in the shadow of Camelback Mountain.
A home worth nearly $6 million backed up to a Scottsdale golf course, multiple high-end Mercedes Benzes. Along with gold bars and jewelry that was worth more than half a million dollars.
VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL: Vida de lujo se daba una pareja de Scottsdale que estafaba a personas en etapa terminal
All of that came at the cost of the taxpayer, according to a federal indictment against Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King.
The Scottsdale couple is accused of being at the center of a nearly billion-dollar fraud case.
The indictment claims the couple, who own companies that tend to wound care, would target elderly patients typically in hospice care. It writes they pressured nurse practitioners to apply wound grafts to patients who didn’t need them. The documents write the procedures were “unreasonable” and “unnecessary”.
Some patients died the day they received the grafts or within days, court papers say.
Within two years, the suspects submitted $900 million of fraudulent claims to Medicare and other providers.
With $330 million going to King and Gehrke in illegal kickbacks as part of the scheme, according to prosecutors.
“It is outrageous, and it's really disgusting,” said Dana Kennedy, the Arizona Director of AARP.
Kennedy has seen countless fraud cases and works to keep Medicare solvent for the future she said. This case however is taking matters to the extreme.
“To have somebody scam somebody who's terminally ill,” she said. “And the fact of what they did with the money is also outrageous.”
With the $330 million pocketed by the suspects according to the document, they used that money to buy the Scottsdale home, another home worth close to $700,000 in Tempe. One Ferrari and three Mercedes-Benzes.
It also claims the couple had close to $525,000 worth of jewelry, coins and gold bars. There was also about $50 million in several bank accounts associated with Gehrke and King.
All of it has been seized by authorities.
Near the end of June, the couple was arrested at Sky Harbor International Airport as they were about to board a flight to London. Prosecutors believe they were trying to flee the country.
According to other court documents, prosecutors believe King and Gehrke knew charges were coming. At their home, authorities found a book titled “How To Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace," according to court papers. In one of their bags packed for their flight, there was a book titled “Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive The System,” the papers say.
Prosecutors used those findings as a reason why they should not be granted release before trial. Adding that there are still millions of dollars they have not seized at this time. Alleging the suspects still have access to those funds and use that money to leave the country.
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