Four Mississippi residents have been indicted on charges of defrauding insurers of more than $200 million after creating expensive and unnecessary medications, The New York Times reports.
Hope Thomley, Randy Thomley and Glenn Beach Jr. of Advantage Pharmacy are charged in a scheme to make compounded medications that insurers would pay upward of $10,000 for regardless of a patient’s medical needs. Advantage pharmacist Jason May and marketer Jay Schaar already have pleaded guilty to their roles in the fraud. Marketers allegedly recruited providers to write false prescriptions for patients they never examined.
Gregory Parker is a nurse practitioner accused of prescribing the medications and lying to federal investigators. A 78-year-old physician already has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for his role in the scheme.
One of the compounded drugs was a dietary supplement composed of over-the-counter ingredients for which insurers paid thousands of dollars per bottle.