He Posed as a Doctor and Billed the Military $26 Million for Fake Therapy. A Federal Jury Just Convicted Him. He Spent the Money on a Gold Cybertruck.
Thursday, September 24, 2026. A federal jury in Fort Worth convicted Kevin Curry, 64, of Frisco, Texas, on nine felony counts for running a scheme that billed TRICARE — the health program covering active-duty troops, veterans, and their families — more than $26 million for depression treatments that were faked, medically unnecessary, or paid for with kickbacks. TRICARE paid out roughly $17 million of it before anyone caught on.
Curry is a licensed professional counselor, not a physician. Prosecutors say he presented himself to patients as a doctor anyway, ran claims through real physicians’ credentials without their knowledge, and had staff falsify medical records to justify the billing. Then, according to the Justice Department, he spent some of the proceeds on a casino-themed party and a Tesla Cybertruck plated in gold.
- $26,900,000billed to TRICARETotal false, fraudulent, and kickback-tainted claims — VA-OIG.
- $17,100,000actually paid outWhat TRICARE paid before the scheme was stopped — DOJ / VA-OIG.
- $5,500,000in kickbacksPaid to patients and recruiters, Sept. 2022 through end of 2025 — per prosecutors.
- $73,230FBI's Cybertruck valuationPer seized-asset forfeiture paperwork — below DOJ's public 'more than $100,000' description.
- 9felony counts, 90-year maxFraud, kickbacks, and money laundering; each of 9 counts carries a 10-year statutory maximum.
Curry owned and operated Acuity TMS clinics in Plano and Fort Worth, plus a third location, Emerald Coast TMS, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. The clinics billed for transcranial magnetic stimulation — TMS — a real, FDA-cleared depression treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain. The fraud, per the Justice Department, was that many of the billed treatments were never provided at all, were not medically necessary, or were obtained by paying the patient to show up.
To make the claims look legitimate, prosecutors say Curry used licensed physicians’ names and credentials on TRICARE submissions without those doctors’ knowledge or consent, and directed clinic employees to falsify medical records to support the reimbursement requests. A federal jury convicted him on three counts of health care fraud, three counts of paying illegal kickbacks, and three counts of money laundering — nine counts total, each carrying a 10-year statutory maximum.
The billing fraud needed patients willing to show up, so prosecutors say Curry built a cash-incentive pipeline: $5,500,000 in bribes and kickbacks paid to active-duty service members, veterans, and their families between September 2022 and the end of 2025 to steer them into treatment they didn’t need. TRICARE exists to cover people who serve; this scheme treated their coverage as a billing account to drain.
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald (Trump DOJ), who leads the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, put it bluntly in the department’s announcement: “This defendant exploited a critical health care program serving active-duty servicemembers and their families, diverting taxpayer dollars to bankroll personal luxuries.”
The detail that traveled fastest is the truck. The Justice Department’s press release describes Curry spending fraud proceeds on hotels, a casino-themed party, and a “gold-plated Tesla Cybertruck worth more than $100,000.” But the FBI’s own forfeiture paperwork, obtained by Yahoo News, lists the seized vehicle’s appraised value at $73,230 — and notes it may be a gold-chrome vinyl wrap rather than literal gold plating. Both figures are real; they just don’t agree, and this story reports both rather than picking the more dramatic one.
The truck wasn’t the only asset seized. The FBI recovered $136,022 in cash and roughly $200,000 in total assets connected to the case, following a January 21, 2026 seizure operation months before Curry’s trial.
NEW: Texas Mental Health Clinic Owner Convicted in $26M Scheme to Defraud Military Health Benefits Program After @TheJusticeDept Efforts. Kevin Curry laundered some of the proceeds by spending his ill-gotten gains on hotels, a lavish casino-themed party, and a GOLD-PLATED…
Curry was originally charged on June 23, 2026, as one of 13 North Texas defendants swept up in that day’s national health care fraud takedown — 455 defendants nationwide, more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud, and over $182 million in seized assets, per HHS-OIG. The North Texas piece alone covered 13 defendants and roughly $365 million in fraudulent billing across separate, unrelated cases; Curry’s scheme is his own, not a group operation with the other 12.
The investigation drew on multiple federal and state agencies: the FBI’s Dallas field office, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the VA’s Office of Inspector General, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which the AG’s office says played a key role in the broader takedown. U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould for the Northern District of Texas announced the original charges; Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Womble and DOJ trial attorneys Adam Tisdall and Yael Mash tried the case to verdict.
Curry has not yet been sentenced; no date has been announced. On paper, the nine counts carry a combined statutory maximum of 90 years — a ceiling, not a prediction, since federal sentencing guidelines almost always land well under the theoretical max for a case like this. What is already fixed is the jury’s verdict: guilty on all nine counts, for a scheme that turned a program meant to treat wounded and struggling service members into a billing scam with a gold truck at the end of it.
A counselor who wasn’t a doctor billed the military’s health program $26,900,000 for therapy that often never happened, paid $5,500,000 in kickbacks to keep the claims flowing, and was convicted on all nine counts a federal jury heard. The gold Cybertruck is real either way — DOJ and the FBI just don’t agree on what it’s worth.
