Medicare Fraud Lands 39-Year-Old Woman in Prison

The DOJ said it seized nearly $100 million in assets from Alexandra Gehrke, including more than $68 million in the bank.

Juliette Fairley

Published: 10/8/2025, 3:44:40 PM EDT

Medicare Fraud Lands 39-Year-Old Woman in Prison — The U.S. Department of Justice in Washington on Aug. 7, 2025. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)

A former Arizona medical entrepreneur with a taste for life's luxuries was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week after she pleaded guilty to improperly billing $1,212,005,778 in false and fraudulent claims to health insurance plans.

Prosecutors secured punishment after alleging Alexandra Gehrke, 39, and Jeffrey King, 46, used two companies to illegally submit medical claims for unnecessary and expensive amniotic wound allografts on some 500 elderly and hospice patients, many of whom eventually died.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) seized nearly $100 million in assets that the couple accumulated from the scheme, including more than $68 million in the bank, a Ferrari Spider, three Mercedes Benz cars assessed at nearly $1 million, $22 million in life insurance annuities, including at the Sentinel Security Life Insurance Company, and $524,745 in gold bars, gold coins and jewelry, according to a (DOJ) press release.

The companies named in the June 18, 2024, grand jury indictment are Viking Consultants and enrolled U.S. government health insurance program provider Apex Mobile Medical for which Medicare reimbursed at more than $1,000 per square centimeter for certain allograft claims.

“Medicare and other healthcare benefit programs paid over $600 million based on these false and fraudulent claims,” the indictment states. “The defendants received more than $330 million in illegal kickbacks as a result of their fraud scheme, which they used to further the fraud and diverted for their personal benefit and the benefit of others.”

The false and fraudulent billing included more than $960 million to federal health care programs Medicare, Treatment Related Insurance for Care and Health Resources for Active Duty and Retired Members (TRICARE), and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs (CHAMPVA).

CHAMPVA shares the cost of covered health care services and supplies with the VA and eligible beneficiaries who were the spouses or children of permanently and totally service-connected disabled military veterans while TRICARE provides coverage for Department of Defense (DOD) beneficiaries worldwide, including active duty service members, National Guard and Reserve members, retirees, their families, and their survivors.

The DOJ said last year that the couple was arrested on June 17, 2024, at Sky Harbor International Airport as they were attempting to board a flight out of the country and charged with conspiracy, health care fraud conspiracy, receipt of kickbacks, and transactional money laundering.

Gehrke and King were among the 200-some people that the DOJ charged in 2024's country-wide federal intervention on health care fraud with false claims totaling an estimated $2.7 billion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.