Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
The Bob Casey United States Courthouse is located on Rusk Street in downtown Houston.
A Las Vegas-based nurse-practitioner is accused of illegally operating a healthcare scheme in Pearland by providing medically unnecessary treatments while profiting tens of millions of dollars, according to federal prosecutors.
Marizel Yukee, a 49-year-old, was arrested in Houston on Monday and charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud, as well as conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and money laundering.
She is one of several Houston-area individuals arrested by the federal government in recent weeks, as part of a nationwide initiative from U.S. attorneys to target health care fraud. One case involves three individuals allegedly distributing medication in exchange for cash to clinics and pharmacies. Another case accuses multiple individuals of making false statements of health services that did not occur to commit $16 million worth of Medicaid fraud.
Sign up for the Hello, Houston! daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.
Yukee, in turn, is accused of submitting nearly a billion dollars’ worth of false and fraudulent Medicare and TRICARE claims for medically unnecessary treatments over the course of two-and-a-half years. Prosecutors say Yukee used those funds to live a “lavish lifestyle,” including the purchase of a Ferrari, a Bulgari necklace and a million-dollar home in Hawaii. She also allegedly paid for the construction of a beach resort in the Philippines.
U.S. Attorney’s Office
A Bulgari necklace and a construction project in the Philippines were named by federal prosecutors as some of the things purchased by Marizel Yukee as part of a medical fraud scheme.
Attorneys for Yukee did not immediately return a request for comment.
She owned multiple medical clinics in multiple states, including Wound Medic, which operated in Manvel and Pearland. Her first business was MyBestHealth First, which was based in Las Vegas, according to prosecutors.
In October 2023, Yukee enrolled Wound Medic as a Medicare provider. Prosecutors accuse her of paying “illegal kickbacks and bribes to induce health care providers and owners, officers, employees, and agents of health care entities to refer Medicare and TRICARE beneficiaries” to her clinics, according to the indictment obtained by Houston Public Media.
On February 14, 2024, one unnamed medical professional allegedly texted Yukee, requesting she purchase flights and a hotel for them. “Once I get that,” the physician messaged, “I will give u your first 3. To 5 patients [sic].”
Yukee and others allegedly applied allografts to those Medicare and TRICARE beneficiaries. Grafting is a medical treatment that involves transferring tissue to repair or replace damaged tissue, including bone grafting and burn care. Allografts are grafts that come from a donor, rather than from a patient’s own body.
According to the indictment, the allografts were “medically unreasonable and unnecessary because, among other reasons, allografts were applied without attempting, completing, or confirming conservative wound care treatment; the wound was infected; the wound had already healed; the wound was not responding to the allografts; the type of allograft applied was selected to maximize profit, not based on the patient’s need; and the wounds would not heal because of the terminally ill patients’ comorbidities.”
Some terminally ill patients who were allegedly targeted in the scheme died within days of the allograft application, according to prosecutors.
Yukee purportedly falsified patient medical records to make it appear that the treatments were reasonable to meet Medicare requirements.
“[Please] add conservative [treatment] to all of them who don’t have,” Yukee allegedly wrote to an employee in October 2025 to prepare the patient’s medical records.
She also allegedly created fake invoices to create the perception that her companies had paid more for allografts than they had in reality. In total, her four companies had claimed $875 million in Medicare and $31 million to TRICARE for allografts, according to prosecutors. Between the two, her clinics allegedly received nearly $300 million.
At the same time, in return for purchasing allografts from unnamed companies, Yukee then allegedly received illegal kickbacks from the companies. Between January 2024 and January 2025, a limited liability company owned by Yukee’s family allegedly received nearly $16 million in illegal kickbacks.
Yukee’s case is being tried in the federal Southern District of Texas. The case was initially under Judge Nicholas J. Ganjei, who recused himself on Wednesday, and the case was then turned over to Judge Keith P. Ellison. It’s not immediately clear why Ganjei recused himself.