The Justice Department filed charges on Tuesday against Dr. Stephen Dubin, a doctor in Nevada, alleging that he orchestrated a $95 million Medicare fraud scheme that involved applying expensive and unnecessary wound coverings to elderly patients.
Dr. Dubin was included in a 2025 New York Times investigation into skin substitutes, bandages manufactured out of dehydrated placentas that cost thousands of dollars per square inch but have not been found to help most wounds heal any better than regular bandages.
Medicare paid nearly $15 billion for skin substitutes in 2025, a spike that analysts have called one of the largest examples of waste in the federal health program’s history.
After the Times investigation, the Trump administration sharply cut reimbursement rates for skin substitutes. Spending on the products has since plummeted to $100 million so far this year.
Dr. Dubin described his business in an interview with The Times in 2025. He said that he purchased bandages from Legacy Medical Consultants, a large skin substitute manufacturer, at a steep discount. He was able to keep that discount after receiving payment from Medicare.
“They float out a percentage, it’s usually 60/40 — they’re getting 60, you’re getting 40,” he said then, referring to the portion of the Medicare reimbursement.
According to the new charges against Dr. Dubin, he submitted “sham invoices” to Medicare that “did not reflect the 40 percent kickback.”
Dr. Dubin did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment.
A Legacy Medical Consultants executive was charged in June with “offering illegal kickbacks, bribes and rebates” to health care providers that used the company’s skin substitutes. The Justice Department estimates that the Legacy executive earned $24 million from the scheme.
Dr. Dubin is also charged with applying skin substitutes unnecessarily to patients who were not good candidates for the coverings, including those who had infected wounds and those who were not helped by prior treatments.
The Justice Department said Dr. Dubin used his Medicare earnings to finance a lavish lifestyle that included the commissioning of multiple multimillion-dollar yachts.
Dr. Dubin said in 2025 that he used skin substitutes only when they were necessary. But he also described facing increasing competition for patients as strong financial incentives to use the bandages drew in more providers. He retired in 2024, in part because the wound care market in Las Vegas became too crowded.
“It’s lucrative, and it’s low risk,” he told The Times last year. “You’re not going to get sued for putting a membrane on somebody.”
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