April 21, 2021
A Tuscaloosa pharmaceutical sales representative was sentenced after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud in a scheme designed to fraudulently bill health insurance plans,
According to his plea agreement, Taft, along with Reeves, owner of F&F Drugs in Demopolis, and Roberts, a physician and co-owner of Southeast Urgent Care in Fultondale, participated in a scheme to fraudulently bill health insurance plans for medically unnecessary compounded drugs. To induce Roberts to issue prescriptions for these medically unnecessary drugs, Taft provided Roberts with pre-written prescription forms for the compounded drug recipes. Roberts then issued the prescriptions, sometimes without patients’ knowledge, and sent them to F&F Drugs, which then filled the prescriptions and billed the cost to health insurance plans. Reeves would then pay Taft a portion of the billing proceeds from these insurance plans, with Taft using some of those proceeds to make payments to Roberts. In addition, as part of the conspiracy and to induce patients to accept these medically unnecessary drugs, F&F Drugs would waive patient co-pays in violation of the health insurance plan rules. To maximize profit from each prescription, the co-defendants agreed that F&F Drugs would automatically refill the compounded drugs that Roberts referred regardless of whether patients needed those drugs. Between April 2012 and February 2014, F&F Drugs billed health insurance plans approximately $2.2 million for medically unnecessary compounded drugs issued as part of the conspiracy. Read the full press release here.
Source: Department of Justice
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