PHOENIX – Three men from Phoenix, Scottsdale and Mesa face charges along with more than 300 others throughout the country in what the U.S. Department of Justice said was a “national health care fraud takedown.”

Tyler Kontos, 29, of Mesa, Joel “Max” Kupetz, 36, of Scottsdale and Jorge Kinds, 49, of Phoenix were charged by indictment with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with a $1 billion amniotic wound allograft fraud scheme, according to a release from the Arizona district of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Kontos and Kupetz were also charged with transactional money laundering, and Kupetz was charged with receiving health care kickbacks.

The indictment alleges the defendants targeted elderly Medicare patients, many of whom were terminally ill in hospice care, through Arizona-based companies Apex Mobile Medical LLC, Apex Medical LLC, Viking Medical Consultants LLC, and APX Mobile Medical LLC.

They caused “unnecessary and expensive allografts to be applied to these vulnerable patients’ wounds indiscriminately, without coordination with the patients’ treating physicians,” the release stated, adding the “superficial wounds” did not need the treatment “and in sizes excessively larger than the wound.”

Kontos and Kupetz - neither of whom had any medical training - located elderly Medicare patients with wounds of any size or severity, ordered and recommended the ordering of allografts to be placed on the patients’ wounds and referred the patients to Kinds and other nurse practitioners to apply the allografts, authorities allege.

Kinds, a licensed nurse practitioner, “applied whatever quantities and sizes of allografts medically untrained sales representatives ordered for the patients, without conducting an independent medical assessment, resulting in the application of numerous and inappropriately large allografts to single small wounds and wounds that required only traditional conservative treatment to heal,” the release stated.

The defendants and their co-conspirators in 14 months caused the submission of more than $1 billion in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare, CHAMPVA, TRICARE and commercial insurers, of which more than $600 million was paid, according to authorities.

Kontos and Kupetz allegedly received kickbacks for ordering and arranging for and recommending the purchasing and ordering of allografts, while Kinds received up to $1,000 for each allograft application.

Assets were seized upon the defendants’ indictment, including cryptocurrency and bank accounts totaling more than $7.2 million.

“These criminals didn’t just steal someone else’s money. They stole from you,” Matthew Galeotti, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division, told reporters last week.

“Every fraudulent claim, every fake billing, every kickback scheme represents money taken directly from the pockets of American taxpayers who fund these essential programs through their hard work and sacrifice.”