The U.S. Justice Department has charged nearly 200 health care professionals involved in a variety of schemes and scams to defraud the government of about $2.75 billion, the agency announced Thursday.
“The Department of Justice will bring to justice the criminals who defraud the American people, steal from taxpayer-funded programs, and put people in harm’s way for the sake of profit,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The defendants were arrested in a two-week nationwide health care fraud sweep that led to the arrest of 193 defendants, including 76 doctors, nurse practitioners and other licensed health care professionals.
The nationwide raid also resulted in the seizure of more than $231 million in cash, luxury vehicles, gold and other high-value assets.
One of the suspects was a Florida nurse practitioner who prescribed more than 1.5 million pills to people across the country, the Justice Department said, through an automatic refill policy with her company.
“This allegedly resulted in the nurse practitioner prescribing Adderall and other stimulants to individuals suffering from drug addiction and continuing to issue Adderall prescriptions for months after the patients’ overdose deaths,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
Adderall is often used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
In another case, three owners and executives of a wholesale pharmaceutical drug distributor were charged in connection with an alleged $90 million wire fraud conspiracy that allegedly introduced “adulterated and misbranded HIV medications into the marketplace,” according to the Justice Department.
Pharmacies across the country unwittingly dispensed these drugs to unsuspecting HIV patients. One patient, the Justice Department reported, took what he thought was an HIV drug and was knocked unconscious for 24 hours because he had taken an antipsychotic drug instead.
Meanwhile, 14 defendants in a separate case were charged with crimes related to the illegal prescription and distribution of opioids that resulted in millions of dollars in false invoices.
In one case, 126 defendants allegedly defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies out of more than $450 million in false claims, and 10 others were charged in connection with a $65 million COVID-19 testing scam in South Florida, according to a Justice Department statement.
The Justice Department’s criminal fraud unit was the lead investigator into the medical fraud schemes. Other agencies involved in the investigation included the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
[Parte de la información para este informe provino de Reuters y The Associated Press].
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