Also called: Medicare cheek swab scam · free genetic test scam · cancer genetic screening fraud · DNA test kit Medicare fraud · CGx testing fraud
Genetic testing fraud gets Medicare beneficiaries to hand over a cheek swab and their Medicare number, often through "free" screening offers, then bills Medicare for tests no treating doctor ordered. Labs pay marketers and telemedicine firms kickbacks for the referrals. One case involving labs in three states billed about $522 million, and Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers paid about $84 million.
What it is
Someone offers a free genetic test to a person on Medicare, usually a cheek swab, and asks for the
person’s Medicare number and a signature. A doctor who has never examined them signs an order, a
laboratory runs the test and bills Medicare, often thousands of dollars, and the lab pays the person who
found the patient. The test is real, in the sense that a lab ran something on the sample. The fraud is the
order and the bill. The HHS Inspector General’s consumer alert describes it as billing Medicare for a test
or screening that was not medically necessary, was not ordered by the beneficiary’s treating physician, or
both.
How it actually works
The offer
A telemarketer, a booth at a health fair or community event, or a recruiter in person offers a Medicare
beneficiary a free cheek swab or screening. In the documented cases, recruiters worked health fairs, church
events and senior centers, and in one case grocery stores, pharmacies and car dealerships.
The Medicare number
The person is asked to confirm their Medicare information and to provide a DNA sample, or is mailed a kit.
The HHS Inspector General’s alert warns that people who agree to testing or verify their information may
receive a cheek swab, an in-person screening or a mailed kit even without a physician’s order.
Where it could have stopped
The Inspector General’s advice is blunt: refuse or return any genetic test kit that arrives unless your own physician ordered it, and be suspicious of a “free” test that asks for your Medicare number. In the Associated Press account of the first big takedown, one beneficiary noticed that the physician named on a swab kit was not his doctor.
An order from a doctor who never saw the patient
A clinician signs the test order without treating or consulting the patient. In the documented cases the
orders came from purported telemedicine doctors or from providers who had not treated the patients, and in
one case a telemedicine company was paid to supply them.
The lab runs the test and bills Medicare
A participating laboratory processes the sample and bills the program. In the 2019 takedown reporting,
bills typically ranged from $7,000 to $12,000, with some far higher. Often patients never received
results, or the results were incomprehensible.
The kickback
The lab pays the people who found the patient. In the documented cases, the payments were disguised with
sham contracts and invoices for marketing services, and kickback offenses feature in the convictions.
Paid first, checked later
Medicare must pay bills promptly, so money often leaves before a claim is flagged, a pattern investigators
call pay and chase. The patient may see the charges on a Medicare statement, or a denied claim may leave
them owing the cost.
Moving the billing and hiding the owner
In two of the documented cases, operators shifted billing between labs to stay ahead of scrutiny, listed
relatives as owners, or used other people’s identities on ownership paperwork, in one case while a
criminal case against them was already pending.
Enforcement years later
In the two documented cases that give dates, the conduct ran from 2018 to 2020, a period that includes the
2019 Operation Double Helix takedown. The sentences described here were announced between September 2025
and May 2026, after investigations by the HHS Inspector General and the FBI.
Why it works
A “free” offer asks for the one thing that is worth money. The person being recruited does not pay
anything, so there is nothing to haggle over or feel cheated by. What they hand over is a Medicare number
and a signature, which is what the lab needs to bill. The Inspector General’s alert advises being suspicious
of any free test that asks for it.
Fear of cancer makes a test sound like protection. Reporting on the 2019 takedown said fraudsters
exploited fears of cancer. The Justice Department’s own description is that cancer genetic testing looks
for gene mutations that could indicate a higher future risk, is not a method of diagnosing whether a
person presently has cancer, and is covered by Medicare only in limited circumstances.
Each link in the chain gets paid. In the Associated Press account, a complicit doctor approved the
test and received a kickback from the recruiter’s company, and the lab billed Medicare and shared the
payments with the recruiter. In the cases here, the labs paid the kickbacks through sham contracts.
Medicare pays first. The pay-and-chase problem means an operator can bill for months before a payer
notices, which gives a lab owner time to move billing between entities.
The patient often gets nothing useful back. In the 2019 takedown reporting, patients often never
received results, or received results they could not understand.
Where it comes from
Entirely domestic: this fraud exploits Medicare, Medicaid and US private insurance, so every documented
case here is a US case.
The first large takedown was Operation Double Helix. On September 27, 2019, the Justice Department
announced charges against 35 people nationwide, including nine doctors, in a crackdown on cancer genetic
testing fraud. The Associated Press reported that Medicare was billed $2.1 billion and that defendants were
in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. No single organization ran it. It involved telemedicine
companies, doctors and labs. Charges are allegations, the people charged are presumed innocent unless convicted, and this page does not
say how each of those cases ended.
The prosecutions continued for years. The cases documented here were announced as sentenced between
September 2025 and May 2026, six years after the 2019 takedown.
Operators range from a marketer to a lab owner. One documented defendant was a marketer who paid
recruiters and a telemedicine firm, another ran a telemarketing company, and two controlled networks of
laboratories in several states.
Real cases
2026 US Sentenced $84.6m
Reyad Salahaldeen of Buford, Georgia controlled four clinical laboratories, Express Diagnostics in New Jersey, BioConfirm Laboratory USA and BioConfirm Laboratories in Georgia, and Tox Management and Tri-State Toxicology in Texas, which billed about $522 million in false claims for genetic tests between 2018 and August 2020. Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers paid about $84 million. The labs paid kickbacks to a network of marketers who collected insurance details and DNA samples from people through telemarketing, door-to-door visits and health fairs. Salahaldeen pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud and was sentenced in 2026 to 151 months in prison and $84,594,165 in restitution. Co-defendant Mohamad Mustafa of Duluth, Georgia was sentenced to three years and $64,301,569 in restitution for paying health care kickbacks.
Read the case file ·
1 source
2025 US Sentenced $55.0m
Jamie P. McNamara, 50, of Kansas City, Missouri, operated several clinical laboratories in Louisiana and Texas that billed Medicare for cancer and cardiovascular genetic tests ordered through telemarketers and purported telemedicine doctors who did not treat the patients. Over about a year and a half the labs submitted over $174 million in claims and received over $55 million. McNamara pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, in an announcement the Justice Department published on December 12, 2025. Agents seized several luxury vehicles and over $7 million in bank accounts.
Read the case file ·
2 sources
2025 US Sentenced $5.2m
Paul Wexler, 56, of Spring, Texas and Paul Bleignier, 64, of Seminole, Florida ran a telemarketing company that recruited Medicare beneficiaries for cancer genetic testing that was medically unnecessary, in exchange for kickbacks. About $17.3 million was billed to Medicare and about $5.2 million paid. Wexler was sentenced in November 2025 to four years in prison, and Bleignier to two years for his leadership role plus a concurrent two-year term for hiding his ownership of a clinical laboratory he enrolled in Medicare while his criminal case was pending. Each was ordered to pay $5.2 million in restitution and $1.2 million in forfeiture.
Read the case file ·
1 source
Red flags
- A “free” genetic test or cheek swab offered by phone, at a health fair, at a community event or door to door.
- A test kit that arrives in the post that your own doctor did not order.
- A request to confirm your Medicare number to get a free test or screening.
- An ordering doctor you have never met. Check the name on the kit or the paperwork against the doctors you actually see.
- A recruiter stationed in a grocery store, pharmacy or car dealership, a setting where the documented recruiters operated.
- A claim that the test shows whether you have cancer. The Justice Department’s description is that cancer genetic testing looks for a higher future risk and is not a way to diagnose cancer now.
- Medicare statements listing laboratory charges you do not recognise.
If it’s happening to you
If someone has offered you a test, or you have already taken one:
- Refuse or return any kit your own doctor did not order, and write down the sender’s name and the
date you returned it, as the HHS Inspector General advises.
- Do not confirm your Medicare number to someone who contacted you without being asked.
- Ask your own doctor whether a genetic test makes sense for you; the Inspector General advises
relying on a physician you know and trust.
- Check your Medicare statements for tests or laboratories you do not recognise.
- Report it to the HHS Inspector General hotline at 1-800-447-8477 (TTY 1-800-377-4950) or
tips.hhs.gov. See where to report for agencies in other countries.
Where the money goes
Entirely domestic, from Medicare and other payers into the labs’ bank accounts, then out as kickbacks and
into the owners’ hands.
The payer’s money goes to the laboratory that billed it. From there, in the documented cases, the lab pays
marketers and telemedicine firms, with sham contracts or invoices describing the kickbacks as payment for
marketing services. What remains is the owner’s. In the Georgia case, the court ordered forfeiture of
$3,044,866 from two bank accounts, a 2019 GMC Yukon and properties in Texas and Georgia. In the Missouri
case, agents seized several luxury vehicles and over $7 million in bank accounts. The marketer
sentenced in Tampa earned over $2.1 million personally from the scheme and was ordered to forfeit
$2.1 million of criminal proceeds.
By the numbers
No published dataset breaks this scheme out as its own category yet, so there is no chart to show.
The data page explains which agency categories exist and why some schemes are
invisible in official statistics.
Every factual claim above traces to one of these. Statistics are reported losses; see
methodology for what that does and does not measure.
Common questions
Is genetic testing itself a scam?
No. Genetic tests are real medicine when a treating doctor orders one because a patient needs it. The fraud is in the ordering and the billing: a test pushed on someone who did not need it, signed for by a clinician who never treated them, and billed to Medicare. The HHS Inspector General defines the fraud as billing Medicare for a test that was not medically necessary, was not ordered by the beneficiary's treating physician, or both.
Does a cancer genetic test tell me whether I have cancer?
No, according to the Justice Department's description in the Wexler and Bleignier case. That kind of testing looks for gene mutations that could indicate a higher future risk of cancer. It is not a method of diagnosing whether a person presently has cancer, and Medicare covers it only in limited circumstances. A recruiter who presents a cheek swab as a cancer check is describing something the test does not do.
If the test is free, who pays?
Medicare, Medicaid or a private insurer is billed, and the amounts in the documented cases are large: the Associated Press reported in 2019 that bills typically ranged from $7,000 to $12,000, with some far higher. The HHS Inspector General warns that if Medicare denies the claim, the beneficiary may be responsible for the full cost, which can reach thousands of dollars.
How is this different from the medicare-health-insurance scam on this site?
That page covers the wider family of Medicare number scams, which includes genetic test offers alongside new cards and free equipment. Genetic testing fraud, covered in depth here, is a billing structure built around a laboratory: marketers collect samples and insurance details, a doctor who never met you signs the order, and a lab, which pays the marketers a kickback, bills the program. The documented cases involve labs, telemedicine firms and marketers acting together.
I think my Medicare number was used for a genetic test. What should I do?
Do not return calls from the people who offered the test, and do not confirm your Medicare details to anyone who contacted you without being asked. Look through your Medicare statements for tests or labs you do not recognise. The HHS Inspector General's hotline takes reports of suspected Medicare fraud at 1-800-447-8477 (TTY 1-800-377-4950) or tips.hhs.gov. See <a href="/report/">where to report</a> for agencies in other countries.
