There are few things these days worth your hard earned money, but your healthcare should always be top priority. Every year, people spend millions across the state of Arizona to get themselves feeling right, and we rely on the system to take care of us.

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One Arizona couple has taken that goodwill, and used it for their own gain.

The Scam of the Century

Last year, on October 24th, 2024, Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King sat in court, awaiting sentencing. The two Phoenix residents had finally been caught on suspicion of conspiracy to commit money wire and healthcare fraud, and plead guilty.

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Over the course of their reign of terror, Gehrke and King swindled over $1.2 billion out of the Arizona healthcare system, and seemingly showed no remorse for their actions. How did they pull it off?

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The Graft Grift

The scam was needlessly simple. It started with Gehrke, who would bribe sales representatives to find hospice patients who were in need of skin grafts. She would then ask the representatives to order “amniotic wound grafts”, sized to at least 4×6 cm. This would insure that the health insurance reimbursement would show profit.

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After this, Gehrke would pass the grafts on to King, who owned a company that would hire nurses to apply the grafts on to patients. Neither Gehrke or King had medical licenses. This grift went on from November of 2022 to May of 2024.

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The two will be sentenced, and money is already being returned to the state, including $410 million in cash, and four cars worth over $980,000.

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