Juan Camilo Perez Buitrago of Columbia pleaded guilty to one count of healthcare fraud and one count of payment of kickbacks in connection with false and fraudulent claims for DME equipment. Perez instructed his employees to establish shell companies in more than a dozen different states, including Massachusetts, and then allegedly purchased Medicare patient data from foreign and domestic call centers that targeted elderly patients. The call centers were instructed to contact the Medicare beneficiaries with an offer of ankle, arm, back, knee, and shoulder braces at little to no cost, then Perez submitted fraudulent Medicare claims for those patients without obtaining a prescriber’s order. In addition, Perez also submitted fraudulent claims for deceased patients, repeated claims for the same patient and the same DME, and failed to provide any DME for more than $7.5 million in claims. When Perez did provide DME to patients, he billed more than 12 times the average price of the DME that he provided to the patient.