Former NFL Player Joel French Sentenced for $197M Fraud Scheme Targeting Elderly and Veterans
Joel French, a former NFL player and Mississippi business executive, has been sentenced to over 16 years in federal prison for orchestrating a large-scale healthcare fraud scheme. The scheme defrauded the U.S. government of nearly $200 million and targeted elderly Americans and veterans' families. French, 47, was found guilty of using overseas telemarketers, sham telemedicine companies, and straw-owned medical supply businesses to sell unnecessary medical equipment to vulnerable patients. The Justice Department announced that French was ordered to pay more than $110.7 million in restitution and forfeit approximately $17 million from bank accounts and other assets linked to the scheme. French secretly controlled eight durable medical equipment companies that billed Medicare and the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The fraudulent activities involved pressuring seniors to provide personal and insurance information, with telemarketers allegedly altering recordings to f... 
