By JOHN HANNA AP Political Writer

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz launched a heartland tour in reliably GOP Kansas on Tuesday, saying he can win the presidential race as an independent candidate by drawing much of his support from disaffected Republicans.

As we travel, I hear more and more that affordable healthcare and leadership outside of the two parties are what our country is yearning for. Thank you to the people of Overland Park, Kansas for your time and your honesty today. pic.twitter.com/Km7qvwD7qM

— Howard Schultz (@HowardSchultz) April 9, 2019

Schultz spent part of a town hall meeting on the University of Kansas campus pushing back against Democrats’ arguments that his running as an independent would help President Donald Trump win re-election in 2020 by splitting the anti-Trump vote. He said a campaign would have to get people who haven’t been voting to the polls and tap support from independents, but added that he’d likely take many of his votes from Trump.

The Brooklyn-born billionaire has not formally declared his candidacy and said after the town hall that he expects to decide in early summer. He said if he runs, he expects more than 40 states to be in play in the presidential race, including red bastions like Texas and Kansas, where the GOP nominee has carried the state every presidential election after 1964.

Just visited the Allen Fieldhouse at the University of Kansas. Getting the tour from Jack Rodgers, member of the 1952 National Championship team, was an amazing experience. #RockChalk pic.twitter.com/v7yBezJl4N

— Howard Schultz (@HowardSchultz) April 9, 2019

“I think my potential candidacy will resonate,” Schultz said after the town hall. “I’m very optimistic about and have great confidence in the American people’s understanding of both how bad the political system is and the need for renewal.”

Trump carried Kansas by nearly 21 percentage points in 2016, but during last year’s mid-terms, Democrats won the governor’s race and unseated Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder in a Kansas City-area district where Trump proved to be unpopular. Schultz sees Kansas as in play partly because of Trump’s trade policies, which he criticized strongly.

Schultz’s audience of about two dozen people included students, local business representatives and people interested in independent or third-party politics. Among the latter was Scott Morgan, an ex-local school board member and former moderate Republican who left the GOP to lead an unsuccessful attempt to form a new “Party of the Center” in Kansas ahead of the 2018 elections.

Morgan said Schultz would be a plausible candidate partly because “it’s such a bizarre time” and believes he would appeal to moderate Republicans who would not vote for a liberal Democratic candidate like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“If he really catches on and he’s got the resources to do it, the impossible can happen,” Morgan said. “But at a minimum, he’s got the resources to disrupt.”

Kansas Republicans remain confident that Trump will carry the state again no matter how the presidential race shapes up. In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot received nearly 27 percent of the vote, among his best showings in the nation, but then-President George H.W. Bush still won Kansas.

“We will deliver to our nominee — I mean President Trump and in the future, the Republican nominee — for years to come,” said Kelly Arnold, a former Kansas Republican Party chairman.

MEXICO, Mo. (AP) — The owners of a natural gas pipeline that exploded in central Missouri in March say the line is now functioning properly.

Energy Transfer, which owns the Panhandle Eastern Natural Gas Pipeline, says it successfully tested a 15-mile section of the pipeline that exploded in Audrain County north of Mexico.

The Mexico Ledger reported that the company tried several tests before the first success on Monday.

The explosion extensively damaged a section of Highway 15, which was closed for several days. No one was injured.

Energy Transfer has not yet set a date for the pipeline to reopen.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — The attorney for a man convicted of abducting, raping and killing a 10-year-old Missouri girl says his death sentence should be overturned.

Jurors found 51-year-old Craig Wood guilty last year of first-degree murder for the February 2014 death of Hailey Owens in Springfield.

Police say he snatched the fourth-grade girl from a neighborhood street less than two blocks from her home as she walked back from her best friend’s house. Several neighbors unsuccessfully attempted to rescue the child, chasing the suspect on foot and by car.  The abduction prompted an Amber Alert in Kansas.

His attorney told the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday that the process used to impose the death sentence wasn’t constitutional. The issue is that jurors couldn’t decide whether to sentence Wood to death or life in prison without parole. That left the decision in the hands of the judge who oversaw Wood’s trial.

Missouri and Indiana are the only states where a judge can impose a death sentence. Other states follow the federal procedure that a defendant is sentenced to life in prison if jurors are deadlocked.

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri man who was driving during a police chase that started in Joplin and ended in Kansas has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Twenty-year-old Marquis Sanders, of Carterville, was sentenced Monday for felony child endangerment and resisting arrest.

Joplin police pursued Sanders’ vehicle in June after a passenger pointed an unknown object at officers in a patrol car. During the pursuit, Sanders ran several red lights and stop signs and made reckless turns. Speeds reached over 100 mph before the vehicle became disabled in Oswego, Kansas.

Because his passengers included four juveniles, Saunders was charged with four counts of first-degree child endangerment and resisting arrest. Three of the endangerment charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A third person is charged in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Olathe student.

18-year-old Matthew Lee Bibee Jr., is charged with first-degree murder in the March 29 death of 17-year-old Rowan Padgett of Overland Park.

A 17-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl also are charged with first-degree murder in Padgett’s death. Prosecutors are seeking to try both teens as adults.

Authorities say Padgett’s killing in an Olathe neighborhood occurred during a drug deal.

Bibee was arrested March 31 after he became a suspect in a robbery. Police say Bibee shot at a police officer and missed. The officer returned fire, hitting Bibee, whose injuries were not life threatening. Bibbee faces an attempted capital murder charge and several other charges in that case.

Bibee remains jailed on $1 million bond.

KANSAS CITY (AP) — Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman Ryan Hunter has tackled the halls of government.

As part of the NFL Players’ Association’s Externship program, the pre-law graduate from Bowling Green State University worked for Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, of Missouri. He focused in part on helping improve rural internet access.

The Players’ Association promotes the externship program online as the “premier opportunity for NFL players to gain valuable experience with top organizations across the country.” Participants work in both political and business settings for several weeks in February and March.

Hunter entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Chiefs in 2018. He didn’t appear for the team last season.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Mexican national accused of killing four people in Kansas and one in Missouri in 2016 died Tuesday after being found hanging from a light fixture in his St. Louis jail cell.

Pablo Serrano-Vitorino was found alone in his cell at 2:02 a.m. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later, said Koran Addo, spokesman for St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

Addo declined further comment but St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards said that Serrano-Vitorino hanged himself and left a note written in Spanish. Edwards was out of town and didn’t know if Serrano-Vitorino was on suicide watch or when jailers had last checked on him.

Serrano-Vitorino, 43, who was in the U.S. illegally, was accused of fatally shooting four men at a home in Kansas City, Kansas, on the night of March 7, 2016. He was arrested a day later and 170 miles away in Montgomery County, Missouri, where he was accused of killing Randy Nordman of New Florence. He was charged with first-degree murder in all five deaths.

He was being held in St. Louis awaiting an October trial in Nordman’s death on a change of venue. Missouri prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

He had tried to take his own life before, with a safety razor, shortly after his arrest while jailed in Montgomery County. After a hospitalization he was returned to the jail.

Authorities say the shooting spree began when Serrano-Vitorino gunned down his Kansas City, Kansas, neighbor, 41-year-old Michael Capps, and three other men at Capps’ home — brothers Austin Harter, 29, and Clint Harter, 27, and 36-year-old Jeremy Waters. Before dying, one of the victims managed to call police.

Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive.

Serrano-Vitorino then allegedly fled in his pickup truck into Missouri. Authorities say he killed Nordman, 49, at Nordman’s rural home near Interstate 70 about 70 miles (113 kilometers) east of St. Louis. He was captured hiding face-down in a ditch a few miles from Nordman’s home, and had a rifle with him, the Missouri State Highway patrol said at the time.

A lawsuit filed in Kansas City, Kansas , by the father of one of the victims accused U.S. immigration officials of missing two chances to detain and deport Serrano-Vitorino.

Serrano-Vitorino was deported to Mexico after he was convicted of a felony in 2003 but illegally re-entered the U.S. He was arrested in 2014 and 2015.

After his 2014 arrest in Kansas for battery, Wyandotte County jail officials notified ICE he was in custody. But Serrano-Vitorino was released after the federal agency didn’t send an agent to the jail, according to the lawsuit.

Serrano-Vitorino was fingerprinted in Overland Park, Kansas, Municipal Court in September 2015 after he was cited for traffic infractions. ICE officials asked that he be held in custody but sent the paperwork to a different jail in Johnson County, Kansas, the lawsuit contends. He was once again released from custody.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities said Tuesday they’ve broken up a $1.2 billion Medicare scam that peddled unneeded orthopedic braces to hundreds of thousands of seniors via foreign call centers.

The Justice Department announced charges against 24 people across the U.S., including doctors accused of writing bogus prescriptions for unneeded back, shoulder, wrist and knee braces. Others charged included owners of call centers, telemedicine firms and medical equipment companies.

The Health and Human Services inspector general’s office said the fast-moving scam morphed into multiple related schemes, fueled by kickbacks among the parties involved. The FBI, the IRS, and 17 U.S. attorney’s offices took part in the crackdown. Arrests were made Tuesday morning.

Medicare’s anti-fraud unit said it’s taking action against 130 medical equipment companies implicated. They billed the program a total of $1.7 billion, of which more than $900 million was paid out.

Telemarketers would reach out to seniors offering “free” orthopedic braces, also touted through television and radio ads. Beneficiaries who expressed interest would be patched through to call centers involved in the scheme. Officials described an “international telemarketing network” with call centers in the Philippines and throughout Latin America.

The call centers would verify seniors’ Medicare coverage and transfer them to telemedicine companies for consultations with doctors.

“The telemedicine we are talking about is basically a tele-scam,” said Gary Cantrell, who oversees fraud investigations for the HHS inspector general’s office. “We are not talking about the use of advanced technology to provide better access to care.”

The doctors would write prescriptions for orthopedic braces, regardless of whether the patients needed them or not. In some cases several braces were prescribed for the same patient.

The call centers would collect prescriptions and sell them to medical equipment companies, which would ship the braces to beneficiaries and bill Medicare. Medical equipment companies would get $500 to $900 per brace from Medicare and would pay kickbacks of nearly $300 per brace.

The scam was detected last summer, officials said. Complaints from beneficiaries were pouring in to the Medicare fraud hotline, and some consumer news organizations warned seniors. As the investigation progressed, Cantrell said, federal agents gained cooperation from people familiar with the various schemes.

Officials said it’s one of the biggest frauds the inspector general’s office has seen. Charges were being brought against defendants in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.

“The breadth of this nationwide conspiracy should be frightening to all who rely on some form of health care,” IRS criminal investigations chief Don Fort said in a statement. “The conspiracy…details broad corruption, massive amounts of greed and systemic flaws in our health care system that were exploited by the defendants.”

Health care fraud is a pervasive problem that costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. The true extent of it is unknown, and some cases involve gray areas of complex payment policies.

Experts say part of the problem is that Medicare is required to pay medical bills promptly, which means money often goes out before potential frauds get flagged. Investigators call that “pay and chase.”

In recent years, Medicare has tried to adapt techniques used by credit card companies to head off fraud. Law enforcement coordination has grown, with strike forces of federal prosecutors and agents, along with state counterparts, specializing in health care investigations.

The Medicare beneficiaries drawn into the orthopedic braces scam didn’t have to pay anything up front, but Cantrell said they have been harmed as well: A beneficiary’s private information, once in the hands of fraudsters, can be resold for many illegal purposes.

Additionally, if a beneficiary whose information was misused ever does need an orthopedic brace, he or she may encounter waiting periods from Medicare. The program limits how often it pays for certain supplies and equipment.

“It can be very attractive to receive equipment,” Cantrell said. “But after giving out your identifying information, it could be compromised to perpetuate additional fraud. There is no fraud without the ID number of a Medicare beneficiary.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Outside allies of President Donald Trump have launched a public campaign urging him to nominate former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as his next secretary of Homeland Security.

That’s despite the uphill battle Kobach would likely face getting confirmed by the Senate.

NumbersUSA, a group that seeks to reduce immigration rates, released a statement Tuesday saying there is “no one more qualified” for the job and claiming Kobach has the support of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

They’re also rallying to defend Lee Francis Cissna, the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, whose job is said to be in danger.

Kobach did not response to a request for comment Tuesday morning.

The White House declined to comment on the push.