Washington, DC, December 15, 2025—On behalf of their whistleblower client, Phillips & Cohen LLP announces that Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King, known as Arizona’s “Glam-Flam” couple, and their company APEX Medical have agreed to pay $309 million to resolve civil allegations that they billed the government for expensive amniotic skin grafts that were not medically necessary.
In what the Department of Justice described as “one of the most financially impactful health care fraud schemes in American history” and one of “the first (criminal) prosecutions in the country involving fraudulent Medicare claims for amniotic wound allografts,” the scheme led to prison sentences for Gehrke and King. The civil settlement will be funded in part by more than $100,000,000 in cash and other assets seized by the government. All civil proceedings remain under seal.
“The government’s success in putting a sudden end to such an enormous fraud and recovering so much Medicare money is due to the speed, nimbleness and thoroughness of its investigation,” said Amy Easton, a partner and whistleblower attorney at Phillips & Cohen. “It’s an extraordinary recovery from, and prosecution of, those who put profits before patients.”
The allegations portray a fraud scheme in which sales reps scoured hospices, adult living facilities and group homes in search of Medicare patients with bed sores, wounds and skin tears of any size or severity. Amniotic wound allografts, which are bioengineered skin substitutes designed to promote healing, were ordered by sales reps with no medical training and applied by nurse practitioners. The skin grafts, which are sold by the centimeter, are extremely expensive. Sales reps were paid a commission based on the number and size of the skin grafts. The result were skin grafts that were often medically unnecessary and always significantly larger than the wounds.
The manufacturer of the skin grafts allegedly paid kickbacks to Gerhke, King and APEX Medical in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. Gerhke, King and APEX Medical, in turn, allegedly paid kickbacks, in the form of commissions, to the sales reps based on the volume of grafts they ordered.
“The fraud in this case was unconscionable and knew no bounds,” said Jeffrey Dickstein, a partner and whistleblower attorney at Phillips & Cohen. “Patients at or near end of life were subject to exorbitantly expensive, dignity-robbing medical care they didn’t need and didn’t benefit from.”
The initial False Claims Act case was filed by Phillips and Cohen. The whistleblower and counsel are grateful to and commend Trial Attorney Shane Butland of the National Rapid Response Strike Force, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lon Leavitt and Matthew Williams of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, Trial Attorney Vanessa Reed and Deputy Director Colin Huntley of the Department of Justice Civil Fraud Section.
About Phillips & Cohen
Phillips & Cohen has represented whistleblowers for over 30 years and is the nation’s most successful law firm in that field, with more than $13 billion in civil settlements and criminal fines collected as a result of their whistleblower cases. Phillips & Cohen represents whistleblowers in qui tam lawsuits as well as cases brought under the whistleblower programs of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Internal Revenue Service.