Key Takeaways
The FBI captured Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, in the Philippines and returned him to the US, the second arrest off its new Most Wanted Fraudsters list in two weeks, the Justice Department said June 20.
Prosecutors say Kimble ran a $1.2 billion Medicare fraud scheme from 2014 to 2019, using call centers and telemedicine to push medically unnecessary orthopedic braces on thousands of mostly elderly beneficiaries.
Kimble pleaded guilty in 2019 and skipped his 2024 sentencing, and his capture came days after the Justice Department published the new fraudster list.
The Justice Department said June 20 that the FBI captured Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, in the Philippines and returned him to the United States, according to Fox News. He is the second person taken into custody from the bureau's new Most Wanted Fraudsters list, which was unveiled only weeks earlier.
Prosecutors say Kimble ran a healthcare fraud scheme from 2014 to 2019 that generated more than 1.2 billion dollars in Medicare charges, per the FBI. The operation used call centers to reach Medicare beneficiaries, screen them, and steer them toward orthopedic braces for pain that were frequently unnecessary and ordered through telemedicine consultations that often skipped a real medical exam.
The victims were disproportionately elderly, and thousands of beneficiaries were affected, the FBI said. The mechanics are the part worth sitting with. A room of phones and a thin layer of telemedicine turned a federal program built on trust into a billing machine, one prescription at a time, until the charges crossed a billion dollars.
Kimble pleaded guilty in 2019 to conspiracy to defraud the United States, healthcare fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, and offering kickbacks, then failed to appear for sentencing in 2024 and left the country, Inquirer reported. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Philippine government helped locate him within days of the list going public.
None of this is new. Wherever public money moves through a system that runs on trust, some of it gets diverted, and WYDE has tracked that gap before, from a city spending 81,000 dollars per homeless person while NGO executives earned 900,000 to the distance between dollars pledged and dollars delivered. What is new here is the speed of the catch, four days from a public list to a name in custody on the other side of the world. The system that got gamed ran on trust, and the thing that finally caught it ran on a published list.
People Also Ask
Who is Herbert Leon Kimble?
Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, pleaded guilty in 2019 to running a 1.2 billion dollar Medicare fraud scheme and was captured in the Philippines in June 2026 after failing to appear for his 2024 sentencing.
What is the FBI's Most Wanted Fraudsters list?
It is a new FBI list, unveiled in 2026, that publicly names individuals charged in major fraud cases. Kimble was the second person on it taken into custody, within about two weeks.
How did the Medicare brace fraud scheme work?
Call centers contacted Medicare beneficiaries and steered them toward orthopedic braces for pain, which were often medically unnecessary and prescribed through telemedicine consultations that lacked a real exam.
How much does Medicare fraud cost?
Estimates of improper Medicare payments run into the tens of billions of dollars a year. The Kimble scheme alone generated more than 1.2 billion dollars in charges between 2014 and 2019.