A South Florida businessman who built a mini-empire of medical-supply companies is headed to federal prison for a long stretch. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Donald Graham sentenced Michael Kochen to 17 years after a jury found he and a telemarketing partner ran a scheme that billed roughly $35 million to Medicare. The judge also ordered Kochen to repay about $19 million.
Kochen was not the only one going away. Sandro Herek, who operated the telemarketing and telemedicine side of the operation and supplied patients to Kochen, received a sentence of slightly more than seven years behind bars. Both men have been ordered to surrender to federal custody on Aug. 9, 2026.
Prosecutors said Kochen controlled a network of medical supply outfits operating under the CLADD Group LLC banner in North Miami and targeted Medicare Advantage beneficiaries for orthotic braces and other durable medical equipment. As Miami Herald coverage noted, the companies billed Medicare for thousands of braces that physicians often approved without any meaningful look at the patients they were supposedly treating.
How Prosecutors Say The Scheme Worked
According to federal prosecutors, the business model leaned heavily on aggressive call centers that pitched braces to seniors and harvested their personal and insurance information. Telemedicine providers then generated prescriptions, often after cursory or nonexistent evaluations, and funneled the paperwork back to Kochen’s companies, which turned those scripts into claims…