Compliance Today (August 2020)
The Department of Justice’s Criminal Fraud division indicted six Texas-based owners and marketers for a scheme to defraud TRICARE and the U.S. Department of Labor, resulting in more than $14 million in illegal kickbacks and bribes.[1]
According to the indictment, from May 2014 to September 2016, the defendants and their coconspirators engaged in a scheme to pay kickbacks and bribes for the referral of TRICARE and the Department of Labor beneficiaries to obtain expensive compound drugs. Specifically, the alleged made kickback payments to marketers through a company they co-owned for the referral of federal prescriptions.
“These marketers were allegedly set up as sham ‘W-2’ employees to appear as though they were bona fide employees of Xpress Compounding. At the same time, these marketers were paid as 1099 contractors by Rxpress Pharmacy, the superseding indictment alleges.”