Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, turned his agency's fraud investigation toward Florida this week, calling the state a long-standing hotspot for health care fraud and demanding that state leaders provide a detailed accounting of how they identify and address bad actors in their Medicaid program. The move makes Florida the first Republican-led state to receive such a formal inquiry under the Trump administration's expanding anti-fraud campaign.

"Florida has been a hotspot for health care fraud for years," Oz wrote on X, announcing the new probe. "What I saw on the ground in Florida around durable medical equipment fraud was horrifying. The scale is out of control, and addressing this will require focused action from state leaders."

Oz gave Florida officials 30 days to respond to a detailed list of questions. CMS had previously sent similar requests to New York, Minnesota, Maine, and California — all Democratic-led states. The addition of Florida signals that the administration is framing the effort as nonpartisan, though the probe's timing follows Trump signing an executive order Monday creating a federal anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance to examine fraud allegations across benefit programs nationwide.

The Scope of DME Fraud in Florida

The central focus of Oz's concern in Florida is the durable medical equipment sector — suppliers who bill Medicare and Medicaid for devices like wheelchairs, oxygen equipment, braces, and other chronic-condition aids. Oz said the volume of fraudulent suppliers in Miami-Dade County alone now exceeds the number of McDonald's restaurants in the state. He added that DME fraud in Florida has produced an estimated $10 billion in losses over the past two years.

The scheme Oz described is well-documented in federal prosecutions: fraudsters rent small storefronts, register the business in another person's name, begin billing Medicare or Medicaid aggressively, and then flee the country before investigators can catch up. Oz cited one recent case in which a suspect tried to escape to Cuba on a jet ski carrying $100,000 in cash after his scheme was uncovered.

"These con artists, they register the company in someone's name, send that person right back to the country they came from," Oz said in a video recorded in South Florida. "We're going to put an end to this fraud."

CMS has already taken one broad step to address the problem nationally: the agency announced it is blocking all new Medicare enrollments for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and other supplies for a six-month period to address suspected improper billing across the country.

Florida's Response

State officials moved quickly to align publicly with the federal inquiry rather than resist it. Jason Weida, chief of staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis, posted on X that Florida had been working with Oz and CMS. "We have zero tolerance for waste, fraud, and abuse — and we will aggressively deploy every resource necessary to root it out at any level in our state," Weida wrote.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier similarly welcomed the federal attention. "The Medicaid system is overwhelmed with fraud and abuse, and we look forward to working with Dr. Oz on these issues!" he wrote. Uthmeier pointed to a recent case his office prosecuted involving a Central Florida man who fraudulently billed Medicaid for thousands of non-existent transportation trips for disabled children, stealing more than $65,000.

Oz, for his part, said he was "grateful the DeSantis administration is taking this seriously" and pledged continued collaboration.

DeSantis's office did not respond to a direct request for comment by publication time.

A Broader Anti-Fraud Push

The Florida probe is the latest in a widening federal effort that has touched states across the political spectrum, though Democratic-led states have received the most attention and the most aggressive follow-through. CMS cut off Medicaid payments to Minnesota last month over fraud concerns, a move that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz called a political attack. Oz said payments to Minnesota would resume only after the state implements a "comprehensive corrective action plan."

Oz has separately accused New York and California of tolerating fraud that has run unchecked for years. On New York, where his office is conducting an extensive probe of Gov. Kathy Hochul's management of the state's $124 billion Medicaid program, Oz said the number of home care and personal care workers billing taxpayers has grown well beyond comparable states. "There's a rot in the system," he said. "The fraud you see in New York state isn't a flaw — it's a feature for some people."

On California, Oz alleged that the governor had ignored continuous calls from state auditors to address rampant fraud in the hospice sector, noting that Los Angeles County alone has approximately 2,000 licensed hospice providers — roughly a third of all hospice facilities in the entire country — with a pattern of billing for patients who are not actually dying.

Hochul's office defended her record, saying she had pushed through Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program reforms that shut down hundreds of middlemen and saved more than $2 billion for state and federal taxpayers before the Trump administration took office. Newsom's office told the administration it was a willing partner on fraud, writing on X: "If Trump is serious about fraud, great — he's got a partner in California in wanting to tackle it."

Past Cases and Scale of the Problem

The federal record in Florida reflects years of large-scale prosecutions that pre-date the current administration. In June 2025, the CEO of a health care software company was convicted of a scheme that generated more than $1 billion in fraudulent Medicare claims through fabricated physician orders. In January 2026, two executives were convicted of a $34 million Medicare Advantage fraud scheme that pushed elderly beneficiaries into accepting unnecessary medical equipment. That same month, a lab owner pleaded guilty in a $52 million Medicare fraud case involving genetic tests ordered through illegal kickbacks.

Trump signed his anti-fraud executive order Monday alongside Vice President Vance, who said the new task force would "stop the fraud of the American taxpayer and make sure that the benefits that ought by right go to American citizens, go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters." Trump separately singled out California during the announcement, arguing fraud levels are higher in Democratic-led states than Republican-led ones — a framing the Florida probe partially complicates, given that the state is governed by a Republican who has positioned himself as a fiscal conservative.

Oz has promised to use new technology to seize funds and prosecute fraudsters before they can leave the country, and has urged Florida residents to report suspected fraud directly to CMS.