If you've been around long enough, you find yourself bragging that "nothing shocks me any more." I say that a lot, and often it's true. But then I started looking into Medicare fraud, and was I shocked! Floored, actually. Medicare fraud is an outrageous pilferage of your and my money--an estimated $60 billion dollar-a-year theft. Until I looked closer, I had no idea just how widespread it is, and how brazenly an army of criminals has turned America's social safety net for 43 million seniors and the disabled into its personal bank account.

In reporting this week's two-part series on Medicare fraud for Nightly News (watch a preview here), I rode with a private investigator, and later went with some FBI agents as they checked on storefront operations that purport to be legitimate medical supply companies. In most cases, they are actually just "fronts" or shell-companies designed only to bilk Medicare. They have nothing to do with actual health care.

In one building alone, I saw nearly 30 offices with signs saying they were either medical supply companies or medical billing companies. Most of the doors, however, were locked, with no indications anywhere of legitimate business. I saw the same thing in other buildings, and in shopping centers--row after row of supposed medical companies that, according to federal authorities, are billing Medicare for millions of dollars each, for services never rendered, for patients never served. The main function of these offices is to fool Medicare inspectors, who rarely visit.

In the next two evenings on our air you'll see some shocking things: a multi-million dollar wheelchair (at least that's how it was billed) and patients being paid cash to cooperate in a fraud scheme.

You'll also meet some interesting people, including Miami's retired Chief Federal Judge Edward Davis, who learned that criminals had stolen his patient ID number and billed Medicare for something that he described as "outrageous"--that same word again. We'll show you what it was. And you'll also hear from a one-time Medicare thief who stole millions and now says it was way too easy.

A while back, Michael Leavitt, the U.S. Secretary for Housing and Human Services, was taken on the same fraud tour in the Miami area that I took. And his reaction was exactly the same. When he got home that night, he told his wife, "In a decade and a half of public service this was the most disheartening, disgusting day I have ever spent. We have to fix this!"

There are a lot of ideas on how to do that, and we'll share some of those thoughts, too. Perhaps 82-year-old Muriel Sherman, whose Medicare patient number was stolen and abused for years, has the best rallying cry: "For these people to do this and not be apprehended is an absolute insult to me, and everyone else." Fix it, indeed.

Editor's Note: Mark Potter's report airs tonight on the broadcast.