SOUTH FLORIDA, Fla. – Four people from Florida were found guilty of defrauding Medicare out of $54.3 million using a healthcare scheme that paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketers and telemedicine providers to secure orders for unnecessary medical prescriptions, which were billed to Medicare.
Each person has been sentenced and ordered to pay a large sum back to the court.
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Luis Lacerda (37, West Palm Beach) was sentenced to three years and five months, Omar Solari (36, Fort Lauderdale) to two years and six months, Michael Murphy (38, Fort Lauderdale) to 15 months, and Joelson Viveros (45, Boca Raton) to five years probation.
The court also ordered Lacerda to forfeit $15,600,333.30 and pay $54,303,526 in restitution; Solari to forfeit $6,341,240.58 and pay $36,246,251 in restitution; Murphy to forfeit $3,650,943.36 and pay $8,374,175 in restitution; and Viveros to forfeit $894,116.45 and pay $3,017,135 in restitution.
Each individual pleaded guilty to owning and operating pharmacies participating in the Medicare program, including one in Jacksonville.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from 2018 to 2021, four individuals paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketing companies to recruit Medicare beneficiaries to accept prescriptions for various medications.
The individuals involved operated companies that engaged in telemarketing activities to generate beneficiary leads. They also paid kickbacks and bribes to telemedicine companies that employed or contracted with physicians who signed the prescriptions.
These physicians had no established doctor-patient relationship with the beneficiaries.
After obtaining Medicare beneficiary information and signing the prescriptions, the individuals submitted claims to Medicare through various pharmacies they owned and controlled. This practice is known as “recycling.”
During the conspiracy, Medicare Part D reimbursed the defendants' pharmacies over $54.3 million for unnecessary prescriptions.