They Called It Insurance.
It Was a Trap.

EvilCorporations.com • Case No. 0:26-cv-60067, S.D. Florida, Filed January 12, 2026 • 31 min read

What It Costs to Find Out You Have No Coverage

Picture this: you just lost your job. The health insurance that came with that job is gone. You sit down at your computer and search for Obamacare plans because you heard that is where people in your situation go. An ad comes up that looks official. It mentions “Affordable Care Act Plans.” It lists Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers. You click it, fill in your name, your zip code, your family’s details, because the form asks whether you would like to “qualify” for coverage and of course you want to qualify.

Within hours, your phone rings. The person on the other end says they are a licensed insurance agent in your state. This detail matters to you because you are not sure exactly how this all works and a licensed professional sounds safe. They know what you submitted. They ask about your family, your doctors, your medications. You feel heard. When you mention you need coverage for ER visits, the agent says yes, absolutely, this plan covers that. When you ask about your specific primary care doctor, the agent looks them up and says they are in network. The agent tells you the plan has no deductible. They use the word “PPO.” They say your copay will be $10 for a doctor visit and $25 for urgent care.

You give them your credit card number. You pay a one-time enrollment fee and a monthly charge that might run $500 or more. They tell you to expect a confirmation email with access to a member portal and all your documents. You feel relieved. You feel like a responsible adult who protected your family.

Then you get sick.

You go to your primary care doctor, the one the agent said was in network, and the receptionist looks at your card and tells you this is not insurance and they cannot accept it. You go home confused. Maybe it was just that one office. Then your child breaks their arm. You go to the emergency room. The ER does not debate the matter; they treat your child. Weeks later the bill arrives. It is for thousands of dollars. You call the number the agent gave you. It goes to a general customer service line. You ask to be transferred to your agent. They say they cannot do that. You ask to cancel. They put you on hold. Then they transfer you again. Some representatives argue with you. Some hang up. The bill collectors do not hang up.

That is not a hypothetical. The FTC’s complaint documents exactly this pattern happening to real people across the country, repeatedly, for at least five years. One person received a $50 check in the mail after her family racked up over $8,000 in medical bills. Fifty dollars. The company mailed her a check for fifty dollars. Another person had a life-sustaining medication that cost $27,000 per month. They called a Direct Health Solutions agent. They told the agent what the medication was. The agent sold them coverage anyway. When the prescription needed to be refilled, the plan provided zero coverage. There is no way to calculate what happens to a person’s body, or their sense of safety, or their trust in any institution at all, when they discover that the safety net they paid for was never real.

The executives at the center of this network used the same bank accounts that took in consumer premiums to buy luxury jewelry, designer handbags, luxury vehicles, sports game tickets, and international travel. The people paying monthly fees for “insurance” that would not cover a single doctor visit were funding someone else’s lifestyle. That is the ledger that does not appear in any financial filing.

Straight From the Complaint: What the FTC Documented

These are direct quotes and documented facts from Case No. 0:26-cv-60067. Nothing is paraphrased. Nothing is invented.

“Defendants operate a deceptive telemarketing scheme that takes advantage of consumers looking for comprehensive health insurance. Defendants target consumers who are often shopping for government-sponsored health insurance and visit third-party websites that mimic the government-sponsored insurance exchanges that offer these options.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 2

• This establishes the predatory targeting method: the operation did not randomly solicit people. It specifically hunted people already in the middle of trying to get real government-backed coverage, the most vulnerable moment in a consumer’s insurance search.
• The websites used were engineered to look like HealthCare.gov or state exchanges, meaning consumers had no reason to suspect they had left the legitimate enrollment ecosystem.

“In calls with Defendants’ agents, consumers often ask for health insurance coverage that protects their entire family and pays for doctors’ visits and emergency room visits or covers specific needs such as specific providers or specialists, upcoming medical procedures, diagnoses, or prescriptions for certain medications.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 34

• The agents heard exactly what consumers needed. Specific providers. Specific diagnoses. Specific prescriptions. This information was then used not to find appropriate coverage, but to craft a pitch that appeared to match those exact needs.
• The complaint documents that agents responded to these specific requests by claiming the plan covered them, without disclosing that it did not.

“Defendants caution consumers not to ask any questions during verification and tell them that the verification recording must be uninterrupted or consumers will need to start the entire process over again. For these reasons, consumers feel pressured to agree with all of the verification statements to complete the sale.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 44

• The “verification” call was designed as a one-way trap. Consumers were instructed not to speak except to confirm statements they had not fully heard or understood. Any question or hesitation would “restart” the process, creating artificial urgency.
• This tactic was used after the consumer’s payment information had already been collected, meaning the psychological pressure to complete the call and “finish” was compounded by the fact that their card had already been charged or queued for charging.

“Defendants’ agents often leave consumers with a ‘direct’ phone number for the individual agent. In numerous instances, consumers call that number, only to be routed to a general customer service representative who will not transfer the consumer to their sales agent.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 59

• The “direct line” was a fiction. It functioned as a disposal mechanism: a number that appeared personal but actually routed complaints into a black hole staffed by people with no authority or instruction to help.
• The FTC further documents that consumers attempting to cancel encountered long hold times, multiple transfers, uncooperative representatives, and in some cases representatives who refused outright. Some consumers were forced to cancel or freeze their credit cards just to stop the charges.

“Defendants may tell consumers that the health plans they are purchasing are not major medical health insurance, but only because major medical health insurance must have a deductible and must cover things like pregnancy, substance abuse, and long-term inpatient psychiatric services. However… the plans Defendants sell are not comprehensive health insurance for many additional reasons including that, fundamentally, such plans do not transfer risk from the consumer to an insurer.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 46

• This is the most technically sophisticated deception in the scheme. During the verification call, agents technically disclosed that the plan was “not major medical health insurance,” but framed this disclosure so narrowly that consumers walked away believing the distinction was trivial rather than fundamental.
• The FTC found that even this narrow, misleading disclosure was insufficient to convey the real difference: real insurance transfers financial risk from the consumer to an insurer. These products transferred nothing. The consumer absorbed every dollar of risk, every time.

“One consumer specifically told Defendants’ agent that she needed a primary health insurance plan that would cover ER visits only to find that, when she visited the ER, she incurred over $5,000 in unexpected medical costs thanks to the plan Defendants sold her.”
— FTC Complaint, Paragraph 58

• The plan sold to this consumer would have covered a maximum of $50 for an emergency room visit. She was billed $5,417. The gap between the promise and the reality was $5,367 of debt she had no reason to expect.
• This consumer explicitly communicated her primary requirement before purchase. The agent’s pitch confirmed the plan met that requirement. Both statements were false.

The Ripple Effects: Who Gets Hurt Beyond the Individual Sale

Public Health

When people believe they have insurance and discover they do not, the damage extends far beyond the individual bill. The chilling effect on healthcare-seeking behavior is a documented public health crisis in miniature.

• Consumers who discovered their “insurance” was worthless only after presenting it at a medical facility were directly deterred from seeking follow-up care. The fear of another unexpected bill does not disappear after one incident; it changes how people interact with the medical system permanently.
• One consumer needed a $27,000-per-month life-sustaining medication. The plan sold to them provided zero coverage. The FTC complaint does not describe what happened to this person when they could not refill their prescription. That gap in the record is itself a public health data point.
• Emergency room avoidance is a well-documented consequence of underinsurance. People who fear that an ER visit will generate a bill they cannot pay will wait, sometimes dangerously long, before seeking emergency care. The scheme systematically created underinsured people who believed they were fully covered.
• The scheme targeted people who were already in a vulnerable insurance gap, recently unemployed, between jobs, or uninsured. These are precisely the people whose health outcomes depend most critically on uninterrupted access to real coverage. The operation intercepted them at their moment of maximum vulnerability and left them more exposed than before.
• Consumers who were pressured into buying junk plans were simultaneously discouraged by agents from purchasing real ACA-compliant coverage. Agents told people that marketplace plans were too expensive, that deductibles were too high, or that they would not qualify. Some of these consumers may have been eligible for subsidized ACA plans and were steered away from them.

Economic Inequality

This scheme did not operate equally across the economic spectrum. It was structurally designed to extract money from people who could least afford to lose it.

• The operation targeted people shopping on government insurance exchanges, meaning people who qualified for marketplace plans, many of whom were lower-income individuals and families seeking subsidized coverage. This was not an accident; it was the targeting strategy.
• Monthly fees reached $500 or more per month, plus an enrollment fee of $50 to $150 up front. For a family living paycheck to paycheck, this represented a significant financial commitment made under false pretenses. When the plan failed, they had paid for nothing and still had no coverage.
• The unexpected medical bills generated by this scheme, including the $5,417 ER visit and the $8,000 in family injury bills, land on people who are already financially precarious. Medical debt at this scale triggers cascading economic harm: missed rent, credit damage, debt collection, wage garnishment.
• The FTC documents that canceling was engineered to be difficult. Consumers had to freeze or cancel credit cards, file formal complaints, and endure repeated failed contact attempts before charges stopped. For low-income consumers, even a few extra billing cycles of $500 monthly charges could cause serious financial damage.
• The individual defendants used consumer premiums to fund personal luxury purchases while their customers went uninsured. Luxury jewelry, designer handbags, sports tickets, luxury vehicles, and international travel were paid from corporate bank accounts that also received consumer payments. This is a textbook upward wealth transfer from people with real medical needs to executives with discretionary spending habits.
• The nine-company network structure, with shared employees, payroll, licensing, and compliance functions across neighboring Deerfield Beach suites, was not just operationally efficient. It was structured to survive regulatory pressure: when one entity faced scrutiny, the operation could continue through the others, prolonging consumer harm.

The Numbers in Human Terms

Who to Hold Accountable and What to Do

The FTC has named the individuals and entities. The court case is active. Here is who is in the crosshairs and where you can push.

The Named Defendants

• Tiffanie Gonzalez: Founder and President of Top Healthcare Options Insurance Agency Inc; CEO of Elevation Media Group; Manager of Premier Services Group. Developed sales scripts, contracted vendors, hired employees, and is a signatory on corporate bank accounts used for personal luxury purchases.
• Ramzey Hassoun: Manager and front-end sales trainer at THO; CEO of Ramz Media Marketing; Manager of WeMake Media LLC (Sargent Financial). Trained the sales agents who made the deceptive calls. Signatory on corporate accounts used for designer brands, sports tickets, and luxury vehicles.
• Richard Sargent: Director of Operations at THO; Manager of Golden State Advisors; President and Manager of Sargent Financial (d/b/a WeMake Media LLC). Managed vendor relationships and built consumer-facing websites. Signatory on corporate accounts used for designer brands and international travel.

Corporate Entities Named in the Suit

• Top Healthcare Options Insurance Agency Inc (THO)
• Golden State Advisors Insurance Agency LLC
• Top Healthcare Solutions LLC
• Direct Health Solutions Insurance Agency LLC
• Prime Healthcare Solutions Insurance Agency LLC
• Premier Services Group Hub LLC
• Elevation Media Group LLC
• Sargent Financial LLC (d/b/a WeMake Media LLC)
• Ramz Media Marketing LLC

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The filing agency. Case 0:26-cv-60067 is active in the Southern District of Florida. Consumer complaints submitted to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov feed the agency’s enforcement data and can strengthen ongoing cases.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): If you were charged recurring fees you could not stop, filed a complaint to cancel and were ignored, or had unauthorized charges continue after cancellation attempts, the CFPB takes complaints about unfair billing practices.
• Florida Department of Financial Services: The defendants hold Florida insurance licenses. State-level license revocation proceedings can run parallel to federal civil suits. Complaints can be filed at myfloridacfo.com.
• State Attorneys General: Consumers across the country were harmed. Your state’s AG office can file parallel enforcement actions, especially if a significant number of your state’s residents were targeted. Contact your state AG with case number 0:26-cv-60067 as a reference.
• Department of Justice (DOJ): If the FTC’s civil case produces evidence of criminal wire fraud (which this operation’s structure strongly suggests), referral to DOJ prosecutors is possible. Public pressure on congressional representatives to advocate for criminal referral matters.

Mutual Aid, Local Organizing, and Direct Action

• If you were sold one of these plans: File a complaint at ReportFraud.ftc.gov immediately. Reference the company names from this article. Your complaint is evidence. The FTC explicitly notes that it relies on consumer reports to document ongoing harm.
• If you were charged and cannot get a refund: Contact your bank or credit card company and initiate a chargeback. You have the right to dispute charges for services that were materially misrepresented. The FTC complaint itself serves as documentation of that misrepresentation.
• Connect with local mutual aid health funds: Organizations that pool community resources to cover emergency medical costs are a direct counter to the gap left by both junk insurance and corporate medicine. Search “mutual aid medical fund” plus your city name to find what exists in your area.
• Share this investigation: The operation specifically targeted people who are shopping right now, during open enrollment periods, on Google for the word “Obamacare.” Someone in your network may be vulnerable to a scheme exactly like this one. Sharing this article is a direct intervention.
• Push for healthcare advocacy at the local level: The reason operations like this work is because the gap between what people need and what they can afford leaves them vulnerable to anyone promising affordable coverage. Connect with local healthcare advocacy coalitions pushing for expanded Medicaid, ACA navigator programs, and community health center funding.