Medicare Brace Fraudster Who Skipped Three Court Dates and Hid in the Philippines Gets 20 Years
Herb Kimble once faced a five-year maximum under a cooperation deal. After he fled to the Philippines before sentencing, he got 20 years.
A Chicago man who helped run a Medicare brace fraud scheme that federal prosecutors called one of the largest of its kind, then skipped three court dates and spent nearly two years as a fugitive in the Philippines, has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. sentenced Herbert Leon Kimble, 60, on Oct. 26, 2026, for conspiracy to defraud the United States and failure to appear, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina said. He was ordered to pay more than $199 million in restitution to Medicare and to forfeit more than $195 million. Prosecutors said he caused more than $365 million in false claims, of which Medicare paid more than $199 million, and used some of the money to buy a luxury condo at the Shangri-La hotel in the Philippines.
The “Iron Man Package”
The government’s amended sentencing memorandum in case No. 3:26-cr-00550 describes how the scheme worked. Call centers in the Philippines, staffed by workers Kimble called “fronters” and “chasers,” drew in Medicare patients with ads and mailers promising low- or no-cost braces. Most were elderly, and some had Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, prosecutors wrote.
Telemarketers pressed patients to accept several braces. Doctors and nurse practitioners paid per “consult” then signed prescriptions, usually without examining anyone. The goal was the “Iron Man Package,” three or more braces for one patient, the memo says. The signed orders were sold to medical equipment companies that billed Medicare.
A five-year deal he threw away
Kimble had already fled to the Philippines when he approached the government through a lawyer just after Christmas 2017, according to the memo. He met prosecutors in London in 2018 because he feared arrest if he came to the United States. He then gave them a list of his customers, secretly recorded people in covert meetings at the government’s direction, testified at a trial and handed over more than 70 terabytes of data from his companies’ servers. Prosecutors wrote that his help significantly contributed to Operation Brace Yourself, which they called one of the largest health care fraud prosecutions of its kind.
In return, he was allowed to plead guilty in 2019 to a single conspiracy count with a maximum of five years. His sentencing was put off for years while he cooperated. Then he failed to appear for court on Aug. 27, 2024, again in September 2024 and again in November 2024, and the court found he had breached his plea deal.
He was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, and on June 11, 2026, he was arrested in the Philippines and deported, the memo says. A grand jury indicted him on three counts of failure to appear on June 16, 2026. Under a new plea agreement, he pleaded guilty on Aug. 11, 2026, and agreed to a sentence of 15 to 20 years. Prosecutors asked for the top of that range, and the judge imposed it.
