Officials stated that a federal jury in Florida convicted a Virginia man Thursday for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare of over $1 million in prescription drug benefits.
According to court evidence, Ronald A. Beasley II, 33, of Portsmouth, was the pharmacist in charge at NH Pharma, a Lake Mary, Florida pharmacy.
Through NH Pharma, Beasley and his co-conspirators billed Medicare for expensive compound drug creams that they never actually purchased or dispensed. Instead, they provided Medicare patients with an inexpensive compound drug cream not covered by Medicare.
Inventory records showed that NH Pharma did not buy enough expensive prescription drugs to fill all the prescriptions NH Pharma billed to Medicare.
In total, Beasley and his co-conspirators received more than $1 million in fraudulent proceeds from Medicare.
Beasley was convicted of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and three counts of health care fraud.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on April 25. Beasley faces up to10 years in prison on each count.
A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Trial Attorneys Reginald Cuyler Jr. and Darren C. Halverson of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are prosecuting the case.
The Fraud Section leads the Criminal Division’s efforts to combat health care fraud through the Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program.
Since March 2007, this program, comprised of 15 strike forces operating in 25 federal districts, has charged more than 5,000 defendants who collectively have billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $24 billion.
More information can be found at https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/health-care-fraud-unit.