When hundreds of thousands of people enrolled in Medicare were billed for expensive medical equipment they never asked for in 2023, it was part of a $10.6 billion fraud, among the largest such schemes in the program’s history, federal prosecutors said this week.

The scheme was carried out by 11 defendants, including citizens of the United States, Estonia and the Czech Republic, who worked for a criminal organization based in Russia, according to an indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York on Thursday.

Those involved in the fraud bought dozens of companies that were accredited to submit claims to Medicare and the program’s supplemental insurers, prosecutors say.

Then, using personal information stolen from more than a million Americans, the defendants filed billions of dollars in claims for equipment that had not been ordered by people enrolled in Medicare and was not delivered to them, according to the indictment.

Even if the patients themselves did not pay for the phantom supplies, which included urinary catheters, braces and other durable medical equipment, such schemes can affect Medicare recipients by causing premium costs to rise.

Medical supply companies offer criminals an easy route for bilking Medicare because they are relatively simple to establish and there is often little oversight as to whether the claims they submit are legitimate, experts say.