A Fort Lauderdale man who invested in three pharmacies that participated within the Medicare program pleaded responsible to participating in an $8.3 million fraud scheme.
In keeping with court docket paperwork, Michael Murphy, 37, invested in Remedy Pharmacy in Jacksonville and two different pharmacies. From round November 2019 till March 2021, he and his co-conspirators engaged in a scheme wherein pharmacy homeowners paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketers and telemedicine suppliers to safe orders for medically pointless prescriptions. The prescriptions had been principally topical lotions together with antipsoriatic medicines, antifungal medicine, and ache medicines, which had a comparatively excessive price of reimbursement from Medicare.
The telemedicine firms employed or contracted physicians who signed the prescriptions. They’d no physician-patient relationship with the beneficiaries and sometimes signed the prescriptions after a fast phone dialog with the beneficiary or with no contact in any respect.
In keeping with a prison submitting in opposition to considered one of Murphy’s alleged co-conspirators, didn’t try to gather pharmacy copayments for the false and fraudulent prescriptions to be able to induce the Medicare beneficiaries to obtain and never return these pointless medicines.
The claims had been typically submitted by means of a number of pharmacies Murphy and his co-conspirators owned and managed in a follow often called “recycling,” and had been reimbursed $8.3 million by Medicare Half D.
In keeping with company data, Murphy had been working Remedy Pharmacy since October 2012. The group is now listed as inactive.
He faces as much as ten years in jail when he’s sentenced at a later date.
In recent times, investigators have gone after plenty of totally different pharmacy and telemedicine fraud schemes. Earlier this 12 months a pharmacy proprietor and his co-conspirators had been sentenced in a $174 million telemedicine pharmacy fraud scheme.
In June 2020, 4 Florida pharmacy homeowners had been indicted for his or her alleged participation in a $54 million compound pharmacy kickback scheme.
The Well being Legislation Places of work of Anthony C. Vitale stand prepared to help those that discover themselves swept up into the federal government’s intensified efforts within the healthcare fraud area. Our agency represents healthcare professionals in state and federal court docket who’re charged with fraudulent billing, kickbacks, Medicare, Half D and Medicaid fraud and false claims, amongst others. Our group of extremely expert attorneys and consultants are right here that will help you earlier than you turn into the main focus of an investigation and can aggressively defend it’s best to you turn into the goal of 1.
For extra info you possibly can contact us at 305-358-4500 or ship us an e mail to information@vitalehealthlaw.com and let’s focus on how we’d be capable to help you.
