Medical Brace / DME company

Victim Location 30824

Type of a scam Healthcare/Medicaid/Medicare

Today is April 10, 2019. I recently saw a scam alert dated August 18, 2017 about a Medicare brace scam. The article stated, " You pick up the phone, and it’s someone pretending to be a Medicare representative. From there, the con has two typical patterns. The scammer will either offer you a back brace through Medicare or claim that a caregiver previously called about receiving a back brace from Medicare". I was visiting my Aunt (65yo) and saw that she had these incessant repeat phone calls from telemarketers coming to her phone. She answered the call and started giving information and I stopped her. I answered and on the line was a foreign (Asian dialect) telemarketer, posing as a DME company stating that my Aunt’s provider had sent a request for her brace and she needed her Medicare information. I asked the lady the name of her company and she started to repeat that she received a request. I cut her off and told her if this were a true DME company the MD office would’ve sent that information to them. I again asked the name of her company and she refused to give the name. I let her know you will be reported and that I knew she was a telemarketer pretending to be a DME company. I hung up and redialed the number that the telemarketer called from and realized that they are using one of those apps to present a fake (familiar or local) number to entice people to pick up. If you redial number you will not get anyone, it will be busy or it will call the actual owner of the number. Who has no clue that their number is being used in a telemarketing scam. I did not keep the number, but I will make it a point to review her call log for the erroneous number used. This happened in the state of Georgia and this state can be slow to stop these kind of things. I hope that the OIG has included Georgia in its rounds to identify if there are any DME companies benefitting from this scam.