The owners of over a dozen New York-area pharmacies were charged in an indictment for their roles in a $30 million health care fraud and money laundering scheme in which they exploited emergency codes and edits in the Medicare system that went into effect due to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to submit fraudulent claims for expensive cancer drugs that were never provided, ordered, or authorized by medical professionals. The indictment also alleges that the defendants acquired control over dozens of New York pharmacies by paying others to pose as the pharmacy owners and hiring pharmacists to pretend to be supervising pharmacists for the purpose of obtaining pharmacy licenses and insurance plan credentialing. Read a Newsweek story and a Department of Justice press release.
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