Fighting Against Medicaid Fraud in Blue States While Granting Full Pardons/Sentence Commutations to Individuals Involved in Medicaid Fraud. Pardoning

JC Legal Resources Center
Jul 27
2 min read

Donald Trump has granted clemency—either through full presidential pardons or sentence commutations—to several high-profile individuals and healthcare executives whose convictions directly involved Medicaid fraud or concurrent massive fraud against both the Medicare and Medicaid systems. [1, 2]

The primary individuals fitting this criteria include:

1. The WellCare Health Plans Executives

In January 2021, Trump issued full, unconditional pardons to five former top executives of Tampa-based WellCare Health Plans. They had been convicted in 2013 for their roles in a $35 million healthcare fraud scheme that intentionally defrauded Florida’s Medicaid program. The executives filed false expense reports to artificially inflate what they spent on behavioral health services, keeping money that legally should have been refunded to the state's Medicaid program. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Todd Farha (Former CEO and President)
Thaddeus Bereday (Former General Counsel)
Paul Behrens (Former Chief Financial Officer)
William Kale (Former Vice President)
Peter Clay (Former Vice President) [2]

2. Philip Esformes

In December 2020, Trump commuted the 20-year prison sentence of Philip Esformes, a South Florida nursing home mogul. Esformes was convicted in 2019 for orchestrating what the U.S. Department of Justice called one of the largest healthcare fraud schemes in American history, totaling $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid. The scheme involved bribing doctors to place patients into his nursing and assisted-living facilities, where they received unnecessary or completely unprovided medical treatments billed to the government. (Note: Following a subsequent partial guilty plea on unresolved counts, he was later sentenced to time served.) [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]

3. Joseph Schwartz

In November 2025, during his second term, Trump issued a full and unconditional federal pardon to Joseph Schwartz, the former owner of the Skyline Healthcare nursing home chain. Schwartz was originally sentenced to three years in federal prison for a $38 million employment tax fraud scheme. However, his operational misconduct extended heavily into Medicaid. Because a presidential pardon only clears federal crimes, Schwartz still had to report to an Arkansas prison to serve out a concurrent state-level sentence after pleading guilty to state Medicaid fraud for submitting false daily-rate information to the state program. [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]

Note: While Trump has pardoned or commuted sentences for numerous other prominent healthcare figures—such as Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, mental health company owner Lawrence Duran, and clinic executive John Davis—those specific operations primarily bilked the federal Medicare system rather than state-administered Medicaid programs. [1, 8, 13, 18, 19]