Omar Solari was the proud owner of not only multiple pharmacies but a telemedicine company as well. An industrious man certainly. Despite all his multiple businesses, Solari’s true passion was recycling. Not just of cans and cardboard. Turns out, recycling encompasses so much more than salvageable products. On March 20, 2024,Solari was found guilty of Medicare fraud from recycling prescriptions.
Solari’s pharmacies participated in the Medicare program, funded by the U.S. taxpayer. Starting September of 2018, Solari paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketing companies in exchange for recruiting Medicare beneficiaries to accepting topic cream prescription that they did not want or need. Earlier said, Solari owns a telemedicine company. Which means, Solari paid himself, from the pharmacy he owned, for the fraudulent Medicare leads.
Solari also paid kickbacks and bribes to physicians who signed the prescriptions. The physicians had no physician-patient relationship with the beneficiaries and typically signed the prescriptions after a cursory telephone conversation with the beneficiary. Or with no contact at all. After obtaining Medicare beneficiary information and the signed prescriptions, Solari submitted claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary medications, through the multiple pharmacies he owned. It is a known scheme called “recycling.” And for recycling, Solari was reimbursed more than $36.2 million by Medicare. And the U.S. taxpayer.
Solari has agreed to full restitution starting with four pieces of real estate property, two jet skis, and numerous pieces of jewelry as substitute assets. But chances are, he is not going to reimburse for the cost of this investigation. Every $1 of fraud loss costs the U.S. taxpayer $4.41. The true cost of fraud.
Shoutout to the Department of Health and Human Services for the ongoing battle in fraud.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “South Florida pharmacy owner pleads guilty to $36.2M Medicare fraud scheme” published by CBS12 on March 20, 2024.
A Fort Lauderdale man is giving back his properties, two jet skis, and multiple pieces of jewelry as part of a plea agreement for his involvement in a Medicare fraud scheme worth $36.2 million. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said 35-year-old Omar Solari pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit a healthcare fraud scheme on Tuesday.
According to the plea agreement, Solari and his co-conspirators owned and operated pharmacies that participated in the Medicare program. The DOJ said they paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketers and telemedicine providers to secure orders for medically unnecessary prescriptions that were then billed to Medicare from September 2018 through November 2021.
