Richard Hall owned two pharmacies, Rxpress Pharmacy and Express Compounding, that supposedly specialized in expensive compounded medications intended to be custom tailored to individual patient needs. However, fraudsters tend tailor to their own needs. These medications, ostensibly personalized, served as a façade for deceitful endeavors. He just the patients and the orders to do it.
From May 2014 to September 2016, Hall engaged in a scheme to pay kickbacks and bribes for the referral of TRICARE and U.S. Department of Labor beneficiaries to obtain compound drugs without any whole health care. Hall paid marketers to recruit area doctors to write prescriptions for these expensive compounded medications that he had created. And to entice the doctors to action, Hall offered so called “investment opportunities” so that doctors who wrote prescriptions to the pharmacy could profit from the pharmacy operations. Investing in business goes hand in hand with success! Even if it’s fraud.
Rxpress Pharmacy and Xpress Compounding utilized the same marketers to solicit doctors, although paid them differently depending on whether they were receiving a commission on a federal or private prescription, in order to disguise the illegal kickback payments on federal prescriptions. Following this, and in further attempt to hide his scheme, Hall funneled payments to these marketers to launder the illicitly obtained proceeds.
On June 1, 2024, a federal jury convicted Hall in July 2023 of four counts of paying and receiving unlawful kickbacks and one count of conspiring to launder money.
The DCIS, HHS-OIG, FBI, DOL-OIG, and VA-OIG investigated the case.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Owner of Fort Worth pharmacy behind nearly $60 million kickback scheme sentenced, feds say” published by WFAA News on June 1, 2024.
A Fort Worth pharmacy co-owner was sentenced Friday to four years and four months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $60 million in restitution for defrauding the government in an illegal kickback and money laundering scheme, federal officials say.
Richard Hall, 53, worked with others to create and market compounded medications, which are intended to be custom-tailored to individual patient needs, according to court documents and evidence presented at trial. Hall paid marketers to recruit area doctors to write prescriptions for the medications, including by creating so-called “investment opportunities” so that doctors who wrote prescriptions to the pharmacy could profit from the pharmacy operations, officials say.
