A co-owner and operator of three Miami discount pharmacies was sentenced today to 168 months in prison for his role in a health care fraud scheme that submitted more than $23 million in false claims to Medicare.
The sentence was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida; Michael B. Steinbach, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office; and Special Agent in Charge Christopher B. Dennis of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Office of Investigations Miami office.
Jose Carlos Morales, 55, of Miami, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Joan A. Lenard in the Southern District of Florida. In addition to his prison term, Morales was sentenced to serve three years of supervised release and to pay a $100,000 fine. A hearing to determine the amount of restitution Morales will pay has been scheduled for April 29, 2013.
On Dec. 6, 2012, Morales pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Florida to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay illegal health care kickbacks.
According to court documents, Morales was the co-owner of Pharmovisa Inc. and PharmovisaMD Inc., which operated a total of three pharmacies in Miami. Morales paid illegal health care kickbacks to co-conspirators in return for a stream of beneficiary information to be used to submit claims to Medicare and Medicaid. The beneficiaries who were referred to the pharmacies in exchange for kickback payments resided at assisted living facilities (ALFs) located in Miami. Morales and his alleged co-conspirators also paid illegal health care kickbacks to physicians in exchange for prescription referrals, which the pharmacies ultimately billed to Medicare.
Court documents also reveal that beginning in approximately 2007, drivers working for Morales’ pharmacies, at his direction, delivered “bingo cards” containing pop out medications to ALFs located throughout the Southern District of Florida. Morales instructed the drivers to pick up any unused “bingo cards” so that Morales pharmacy personnel could put the medications back into pill bottles. Unused and partially used medications were eventually re-billed to Medicare and Medicaid, and a majority of the previously submitted claims to Medicare and Medicaid were never reversed. Morales also instructed Morales pharmacy personnel to place unused and partially used medications into bottles to be sold directly to the general public from the “community” pharmacy shelves.
Morales and his alleged co-conspirators also engaged in sham financial transactions to facilitate and conceal the fraud schemes and the flow of fraud proceeds, according to court documents. In most instances, the sham transactions involved shell entities owned and/or controlled by Morales or his alleged co-conspirators.
According to court documents, Morales and his co-conspirators submitted and caused to be submitted approximately $23,367,755 in false and fraudulent claims to the Medicare and Florida Medicaid programs.
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