Richard Schirripa, a licensed pharmacist in New York City, was charged May 26 with violating the Defense Production Act by allegedly hoarding and hiking the price of thousands of N95 masks.
Mr. Schirripa allegedly bought $200,000 worth of N95 masks from the black market between February and April and sold thousands of them at severely inflated prices.
He often sold them out of his car and charged up to $25 for a mask that cost about $1.27, the U.S. Justice Department alleged. When the Defense Production Act was invoked March 25, it made it a crime to hoard or price gouge N95 masks.
In a separate charge, Mr. Schirripa was also accused of falsely billing Medicare and Medicaid for thousands of doses of controlled substances that he kept for himself before closing his pharmacy in New York City earlier this year.
Mr. Schirripa is charged with violating the Defense Production Act, committing healthcare fraud, aggravated identity theft and exploiting the personal information of his pharmacy's customers to fill prescriptions.
Read the Justice Department's full news release here.