Four individuals and seven companies have been indicted in a $1 billion telemedicine fraud scheme, the Department of Justice announced this week.
The District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee unsealed a 32-count indictment on the individuals and companies. The indictment stated that HealthRight LLC, a telemedicine company with locations in Pennsylvania and Florida, and Scott Roix, 52, of Seminole, Fla., and the CEO of HealthRight, pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy for their roles in the telemedicine healthcare fraud scheme in a criminal information. Roix and HealthRight also pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud in a separate scheme for fraudulently telemarketing dietary supplements, skin creams, and testosterone, according to DOJ officials.
In addition, three other individuals were indicted along with their compounding pharmacies, Synergy Pharmacy Services, located in Palm Harbor, Fla. and Precision Pharmacy Management, located in Clearwater, Fla.. Another co-conspirator, Larry Everett Smith, of Pinellas Park, Fla. also a pharmacy compounder, and his companies Tanith Enterprises, ULD Wholesale Group, Alpha-Omega Pharmacy, all located in Clearwater, Germaine Pharmacy located in Tampa, Fla., and Zoetic Pharmacy located in Houston, Texas, were all also named as defendants. All the defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, mail fraud, and introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce, per the indictment.
The indictment alleges that from June 2015 through April 2018, these individuals and companies, together with others, “conspired to deceive tens of thousands of patients and more than 100 doctors” located in Tennessee and elsewhere across the country “for the purpose of defrauding private healthcare benefit programs such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee out of approximately $174 million. The indictment further alleges that the defendants submitted not less than $931 million in fraudulent claims for payment,” according to the indictment.
More specifically, according to the indictment, the defendants “set up an elaborate telemedicine scheme in which HealthRight fraudulently solicited insurance coverage information and prescriptions from consumers across the country for prescription pain creams and other similar products.” The indictment states that doctors approved the prescriptions without knowing that the defendants were massively marking up the prices of the invalidly prescribed drugs, which the defendants then billed to private insurance carriers.
In addition to their roles in the healthcare fraud conspiracy, Roix and HealthRight were also charged with conspiring to commit wire fraud as part of a scheme to use HealthRight’s telemarketing facilities to fraudulently sell millions of dollars’ worth of products such as weight loss pills, skin creams, and testosterone supplements through concocted claims of efficacy and intentionally deficient customer service designed to stall consumer complaints, according to the indictment.
