May 28, 2021

Erik Santos of Georgia was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison following his guilty plea on healthcare fraud charges.  Santos conspired with Florida compounding pharmacy Patient Care America and others to recruit Tricare beneficiaries to fill prescriptions for expensive, supposedly tailor-made, compounded medications that consisted of little more than common pain or scar creams, but came with price tags as high as $10,000-$15,000 per month.  The beneficiaries did not need the medications, which had little to no therapeutic value, and Santos secured the prescriptions by paying doctors, who had not actually seen the beneficiaries, to approve pre-printed prescriptions for large amounts of these medications.  Santos’s fraudulent referrals caused an actual loss to the Tricare program of approximately $12 million.  PCA pharmacy paid Santos over $7 million in prescription referral kickbacks.  In addition to the prison sentence, the Court imposed restitution in the amount of $11.8 million and entered a forfeiture judgement of approximately $7.6 million.  USAO SD FL

Tagged in: Compounding Pharmacy Fraud, Criminal Proceedings, Healthcare Fraud, Lack of Medical Necessity, Other Government Health Programs, Pharma Fraud,