New York Man Arrested for $17M Medicare Fraud Charges

NEW ORLEANS—U.S. Attorney Duane Evans announced that Robert Lake, a resident of East Rockaway, New York, was arrested in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport after disembarking from an international flight. Lake was previously indicted for federal health care fraud on Oct. 18, 2025, for one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and three counts of health care fraud.

According to the indictment, Lake was a licensed prosthetist and orthotist who operated his own durable medical equipment (DME) supply companies, Triseto and Ortho Works. From 2017 to July 2019, Lake purchased doctors’ orders for medically unnecessary orthotic braces and submitted claims to Medicare. Medicare revoked Triseto’s enrollment in the program in July 2019, after which Lake began selling doctors’ orders through his marketing company, Cranial Scientific, in exchange for kickbacks. The doctors’ orders were medically unnecessary and, at times, manipulated at Lake’s instruction.

Lake has been charged with conspiring with others, including Houma resident Patrick Haydel.  Haydel previously pleaded guilty to his role in this same fraud scheme. Haydel and Lake later learned that several physicians complained that they never signed the orders sold by Lake, and that Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers complained they neither requested nor needed the DME they received. 

After the government executed a search warrant on Haydel’s business, Lake transferred over $2 million to a Philippine account. In total, Lake and Haydel submitted more than $17 million in fraudulent DME claims to Medicare, for which Medicare reimbursed them more than $8 million.

For each count of fraud, Lake will face up to ten years in prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release from prison, a fine of up to $250,000—or twice the gross gain to Lake or the gross loss to any victims—and a mandatory $100 special assessment fee.