The president of a Florida insurance brokerage firm and the CEO of a marketing firm were sentenced to 20 years in prison each on Wednesday for leading a sprawling $233 million Affordable Care Act fraud scheme that preyed on Florida’s most vulnerable residents—including homeless and unemployed people and newly displaced hurricane victims—to pocket millions in unearned commissions.
Cory Lloyd, 46, of Stuart, Florida, and Steven Strong, 42, of Mansfield, Texas, were convicted of conspiracy and fraud for their roles in the scheme, which involved lying and falsifying government forms to obtain coverage for individuals, as well as lying to or bribing would-be enrollees into signing up for plans even though they knew doing so would cost them their existing insurance coverage. In addition to their prison sentences, the pair was sentenced to pay $180.6 million in reparations to their victims.
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According to Justice Department authorities, Lloyd and Strong profited handsomely from the plan for years, spending the earnings on luxury automobiles, an 80-foot yacht, and an oceanfront property in the Florida Keys.
“Preying upon medically compromised consumers to rob hundreds of millions of taxpayer-funded programs is evil and unforgivable,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“Fraud schemes like this rob citizens and shake faith in our institutions. Today’s sentencing is the latest example of this DOJ’s commitment to fighting fraud nationwide,” Bondi said.
According to Justice Department sources familiar with the matter, approximately 35,000 people were fraudulently enrolled in Affordable Care Act insurance over the course of many years. The two sought about $233 million in fraudulent payments, including over $180 million in federal Affordable Care Act funds.
“These defendants were sophisticated, licensed insurance brokers,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement.
“They had everything and intentionally took advantage of people who had nothing. The message from these sentences is simple: Those who seek to line their own pockets with taxpayer dollars, victimize our most vulnerable and deplete federal programs will be held accountable.”
According to materials acquired by Fox News Digital, the two purposely targeted individuals experiencing homelessness in the state as well as those suffering from mental health conditions such as opioid or other drug addiction.
Prosecutors claimed at trial that Lloyd and Strong planned to avoid federal income and eligibility verification procedures. They also purposefully submitted Medicaid applications designed to result in denials, allowing them to push those same people into fully subsidized Affordable Care Act plans outside of the open enrollment period, maximizing commissions year-round.
Their lavish lifestyle stood in stark contrast to that of the people they lied to and defrauded.
“One of the really awful things about the case is that it’s not only a scheme that’s taking money from the elderly and the disabled and defrauding the taxpayers, but that it actually resulted in real harm to the patients as well,” one Justice Department official said in an interview.
Individuals suffered harm when they lost access to life-saving therapies for opioid use disorders, mental health illnesses, and serious infectious diseases.
Text messages produced during the trial showed Strong and Lloyd discussing sending “street marketers” into Florida disaster shelters to solicit recruits.
In one text exchange, Strong recommended sending a team of “street marketers” to Florida disaster shelters to solicit enrollees. Lloyd replied enthusiastically, “It’s a killer idea, if we could pull it off!”
Prosecutors claimed that the activities were especially detrimental since they interrupted current coverage arrangements and compromised access to treatment for critical diseases.
Many of the victims were homeless or unemployed, or they qualified for Medicaid, a low-income or vulnerable population insurance option that, in many cases, met their needs.
Jurors heard from a Jacksonville-based psychiatrist who serves homeless people and spoke about the harm some of his patients suffered as a result of the deception, which resulted in them losing Medicaid coverage.
This included a person “living in the woods behind Walmart” who had schizoaffective disorder, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Like others, this person had previously enrolled in Medicaid, which covered the entire cost of a $2,000 shot used to treat schizoaffective disorder. Enrollment in an Affordable Care Act plan resulted in the individual losing that coverage.
The sentencing comes as the Justice Department has taken aggressive steps to combat healthcare fraud, including through its ongoing “strike force” program, which operates in 25 federal districts and has resulted in criminal charges against approximately 5,000 people, according to information shared with Fox News Digital.
It also comes as the DOJ’s Health Care Fraud Unit announced the largest national healthcare fraud takedown in history in 2025, charging over $15 billion in claimed losses and forfeitures and restoring more than $560 million to the public.
Justice Department officials stated that the amount is “many, many, many times our annual budget.”
