South Florida has been America's fraud capital for decades – a place where criminals rent an office, hang a sign, and steal millions before anyone catches on.
Now the game is up.
What DeSantis just revealed about those fake "clinics" – and what Florida is doing to make sure it never happens again – is something every taxpayer needs to see.
The Staged Operations Nobody Was Stopping
Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Shevaun Harris spelled out exactly how brazen these thieves were.
They rented office space.
They decorated.
A neighbor watched them show up, operate for maybe a week – and then vanish.
The whole point was never to provide medical care.
It was to register as a Medicaid provider, submit claims for patients who didn't exist, pocket taxpayer dollars, and disappear before anyone came looking.
"More than a dozen entities presenting themselves as Medicaid providers were in fact staged operations," Harris said. "They were created for one purpose only, to steal from the state and from a program designed to support our most vulnerable."
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2065563260703719460?s=20
This is not a new scam.
Federal prosecutors documented it in 2007, when the U.S. attorney in Miami revealed that nearly one-third of randomly inspected Medicare billing businesses – 481 of them – didn't exist.
Those ghost companies had billed $237 million in a single year.
The same playbook. The same South Florida zip codes. Two decades later.
Florida Is Done Paying First and Asking Questions Later
DeSantis called out the system that made this possible.
"For far too long, we've relied on a pay and chase model where fraudulent claims are paid first, and then investigated years later," he said. "That approach is costly, that approach is inefficient, and ultimately it's not fair to taxpayers."
That's a direct shot at how Washington has run Medicaid for generations – write the check, sort it out later, maybe.
Florida is replacing that model with three new tools.
First, the state is partnering with SentiLink – an identity fraud detection company – to screen providers before they ever bill a single dollar.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2065511582638227536?s=20
SentiLink is built to catch fake identities, stolen credentials, and shell ownership structures before a fraudulent provider ever gets near the billing system.
The technology flags suspicious activity in minutes instead of the days it used to take investigators working manually.
Second, Florida has frozen enrollment for the highest-risk provider categories: durable medical equipment suppliers and adult day care providers.
These are the exact categories South Florida fraudsters have exploited for 20 years – wheelchair companies that never bought a wheelchair, day care providers who never saw a patient.
Third, every active Medicaid provider in Florida – every single one – will be required to prove who they are and verify their credentials over the next 12 to 24 months.
Anyone who doesn't comply gets cut from the program.
Harris put it plainly: "Find another state, because our state is closed to fraud."
The Numbers Behind the Warning Shot
Florida's crackdown is already producing results before the new tools even kick in.
Over the past two years, the Agency for Health Care Administration has booted or blocked more than 3,200 providers and clawed back $136 million tied to fraud and abuse.
That's not a rounding error.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2065487464827892074?s=20
That's 3,200 bad actors – people running phony operations against a program that covers nearly 4 million Floridians – gone.
DeSantis credited both the Trump administration and Dr. Mehmet Oz at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for pushing states to tighten oversight.
Florida is executing that directive – and doing it with its own money on the line.
The state has cut its budget for four straight years, quadrupled its rainy day fund, and retired 50% of the taxpayer-supported debt Florida accumulated all the way back to the 1840s.
Every dollar stolen from Medicaid is a dollar DeSantis can't return to taxpayers.
That's why this fight is personal for him – and why the fraudsters who thought South Florida was still a safe haven just made a very expensive miscalculation.
"Buckle up," DeSantis said. "Some of these guys that aren't behaving well? They're going to have a lot more to deal with."
Sources:
- "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Medicaid Integrity Initiative to Crack Down on Fraud," Executive Office of the Governor, June 12, 2026.
- Skyler Shepard, "Staged 'Medicaid providers' busted as DeSantis says $136M recovered and 3,200 cut off," CBS12, June 12, 2026.
- "Gov. Ron DeSantis announces major Medicaid fraud prevention measures at press conference in West Palm Beach," WPTV, June 12, 2026.
- U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, Southern District of Florida, Medicare Fraud Task Force Announcement, 2007.
- "National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 324 Defendants Charged in Connection with Over $14.6 Billion in Alleged Fraud," U.S. Department of Justice, June 30, 2025.
