It’s not that often that a citizen gets to catch widespread Medicare fraud in real time. it’s even less common to alert Medicare to fraud that’s been going on for 12 years — and has not yet been stopped. But that’s exactly what happened to me the other day.
I got a bill from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has my traditional Medicare insurance policy, billing me for multiple urinary catheters — which I had never used. But Medicare paid, and informed me that I might have to pay the part they didn’t cover.
This surprised me no end, because I recognized the provider’s name, GPAAK Equipments LLC. Last November, my Medicare Part G supplemental insurer had rejected billing from this company for these same multiple urinary catheters, on the same dates, sending the claims to their “special investigations unit” and notifying me of this fact by sending me a copy of the bill and denial. (See below.)
So, despite my Part G plan’s rejection of these services, months later the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, my traditional Medicare insurer, went ahead and paid the claims: Billed for $1,800, they paid $1,411.20, four times. They rejected two similar claims.
This is remarkable for several reasons:
- There are multiple online references to fraud by this company online from as long as two years ago. See here and here and here.
- Urinary catheter scams have been documented for years. See here. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General declared in 2025 that it had documented urinary catheter scams as far back as 2014.
- The Trump administration declared war on fraud, waste and abuse. It professed to spend a lot of time with DOGE erasing fraud. But this particular fraud, lying there in plain sight, continued.
Medicare denial
The Medicare service letter said Medicare had approved four of these $1,800 claims but denied two with these notes:
“A. The information provided does not support the need for this many services or items within this period of time. Local Coverage Determinations (LCDs) help Medicare decide what is covered. An LCD was used for your claim. Yui can compare your case to the LCD, and send ifnormation from your doctor if you think it could change our decision. Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) for a copy of the LCD.
“B. The following policies were used when we made this decision: L33803.
“C. You didn’t know this service isn’t covered so you don’t have to pay. If you paid and do not receive a refund from your provider, you have 6 months to send a copy of this notice, your provider’s bill, and proof that you paid to the address on the last page of this notice. Future services of this type won’t be paid.”
But it then informed me that the “maximum you may be billed” is $1,440, for four instances of $360 each that Medicare approved, but did not cover completely.
Calling the fraud line
I called the Medicare fraud line. They sounded surprised and confused.
I talked to Person A on the intake line, and he very carefully took down all of my information. Then he switched me to Person B, who also took down information very carefully.
I told both of them that I could see online that there were thousands and thousands of people who knew that this particular fraud was taking place on a massive scale.
They told me I don’t need to pay. I told them that Medicare shouldn’t have paid.
People on Reddit are talking about it: “I work in an insurance office, and I’ve been pretty proactive in trying to catch the scammers. I have a list of providers I suspect of fraud, but I’m only going to share the ones where I’ve found strong supporting evidence. Evidence I’ve gathered includes online reviews from various sources, and sometimes is as simple as the member being vigilant and calling to tell us they don’t recognize the provider or the service that was billed.”
“I got a letter from the Retina Group of Washington explaining that all their files had been hacked. Now I am opening my E.O.B. statements that Medicare sends out each month, and this medical equipment provider in Texas named GPAAK is charging thousands of dollars of bladder catheters to MY Medicare number. Medicare is doing an investigation, but who knows when they will stop approving( and PAYING for) these charges from GPAAK. Its a fraud, and GPAAK should be jailed.” (See also links above.)
My Part G Medicare supplemental insurance, via Emblem Health in New York, did not pay any of the submitted charges but included a note “5MA,” which linked to a footnote saying “5MA: submit medical records to: Attention: Special Investigations Unit 55 Water St., NY NY 10041.”
Gpaak Equipments has a National Provider Identification number of 558186205. According to the NPI Profile website, it has been active since Nov. 18, 2024. Its address is 777 S. Central Expway, Suite 6B, Richardson, Tex., 75080. According to Google street view, this is a nondescript building; several other businesses have addresses there also. The phone, (800) 484-3834, was constantly busy. There is no email address that I could find publicly.
OpenCorporates lists Gpaak as having a registered address of 609 Saint George, Richardson, Tex., 75081-5136. (This address appears to be residential, but the Google Maps image is blurred; Zillow has it as a 3,100-square-foot four-bedroom, four-bath home.) The “agent name” for Gpaak, per Open Corporates, is Moin A. Muhammad, with his address being the South Central Expway address. Directors and officers are listed as: Ozodbek Tulanov, managing member, and Moin A Muhammad, agent.
Muhammad, per Open Corporates, is associated with G Paak LLC, Gpaak Equipments LLC, and the DDS Foundation, also at the Saint George address. The DDS Foundation is listed as a nonprofit, which also operates as “Helping Hearts.” Muhammad is listed as both agent and officer. He seems to be around 31 years old, according to people searches. He appeared recently before the city council asking for a zoning change for planned construction, from industrial zoning to community retail.
Charity Navigator doesn’t know anything about the DDS Foundation. Granted AI says it “is a nonprofit organization focused on human services,” with total assets of $44,000. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer has its tax form saying its total 2024 donations were $123,554, and its expenses were: “Charity 108,776 Office Expenses 152.” It’s hard to find specifics about DDS because search engines confuse that with the DDS degree of a dentist; Helping Hearts, likewise, is a much-loved name that is pretty impossible to search because the results are flooded with non-relevant information.
Tulanov is also associated with Auto Gold Solutions in Richardson, Tex., and Interstyle, Inc., based on Brooklyn.
Why?
So why is Medicare still paying these bills, if my Part G insurer, and the entire Reddit population, know that this is fraud?
Another question: How much money has the federal government poured into this?
Yet another question: Is anybody trying to find these people and prosecute them? Or to recoup all of the money that has apparently been paid? In my case the supplier charged $1,800 six times. Medicare approved four of those charges, paying not the full $1,800, but $1,411.20 that left me supposedly with the $360 for each of the four. People on Reddit and Trustpilot described very similar events. There must be hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to this company alone.
In November of last year, Emblem knew this was a scam. Emblem denied the charges in a statement sent Nov. 11, 2025.
But Medicare still paid, this year, months later. I got my explanation of benefits from Medicare dated April 10, 2026, with claims processed from Oct. 12, 2025 through April 10, 2026, meaning that the claims may have been submitted earlier, but they’re only processed in that October through April 2026 time frame. These were the claims that my Part G insurer denied.
One other question: The wizards from Elon Musk’s DOGE said they were slashing fraud, waste and abuse for the Trump administration. But this has been lying around in plain sight since 2014, and it’s still going on. Why?
