A pair of Jefferson County businessmen defrauded $12 million from Colorado’s Medicaid program by charging the state for eyeglasses that did not exist, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser alleged in a June indictment.
Jared Heath, 37, and his husband James Heath, 33, who is also known as James Atkinson, are accused of using their eyeglasses business, QuickSpex, to bill Medicaid for more than 28,000 pairs of glasses that never existed between 2021 and 2025, according to the indictment.
The pair billed the state for nearly 33,000 frames but sold only about 3,300 glasses frames to customers in that timeframe, the indictment alleges. The two men used the $12 million in fraudulent Medicaid payments to buy a home, vehicles and a diamond business, according to a Tuesday news release from Weiser’s office.
James and Jared Heath collected annual overpayments of between $2.6 and $3.6 million each year between 2021 and 2024, according to the indictment. In 2021, the company billed Medicaid for almost 8,000 glasses frames, but their internal records show they gave frames to only 17 customers.
QuickSpex, which is now located at 600 S. Holly Street in Denver, did not open its physical location until 2022, according to the indictment, filed June 12.
Jared and James Heath are each charged with six counts of Medicaid fraud, five counts of committing a cybercrime and a single count of money laundering. Jared Heath, who is in custody at the Denver Downtown Detention Center on a $100,000 cash only bond, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. A person who answered a phone number listed for James Heath hung up without commenting.
Both men are represented by public defenders, who as a matter of policy do not comment on ongoing cases.
The case against the couple was part of an effort spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate health care fraud. The DOJ on Tuesday against 455 defendants across the country for fraud schemes that involved over $6.5 billion in false claims, the agency said in a news release.
