McAllen Woman Pleads Guilty to Multi-Million Dollar Kickback Conspiracy

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/mcallen-woman-pleads-guilty-multi-million-dollar-kickback-conspiracy

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of Texas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 7, 2019

McAllen Woman Pleads Guilty to Multi-Million Dollar Kickback Conspiracy

McALLEN, Texas – A local pharmacy marketer entered a guilty plea in connection with her role in a multi-million dollar illegal kickback conspiracy involving a pharmacy in the Rio Grande Valley and doctors throughout Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick. Victoria Renee Guerra, 35, a licensed pharmacist of McAllen, entered her guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez this morning.

At the hearing, Guerra admitted that as part of her role as a purported marketer, she recruited physicians to write prescriptions for expensive compound drugs to be filled by Pharmacy A and for which the pharmacy would bill federal health care programs.

During an approximately two-year period starting in late 2014, the owner of Pharmacy A paid Guerra approximately $7.5 million in return for compound drug prescriptions written by physicians Guerra recruited. In turn, Guerra paid a cut of the payments from Pharmacy A to the prescribing physicians. For example, Guerra admitted she paid approximately $2.1 million in kickbacks to one of the physicians sending prescriptions to Pharmacy A, identified in the Criminal Information as “Doctor 1.”

During the conspiracy, pharmacy A submitted claims totaling approximately $42.2 million to the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Workers Compensation Program, for prescriptions that doctor 1 wrote for beneficiaries of the Federal Employee’s Compensation Act.
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[TexasTowelie]

1. I think that I read about this case in the McAllen Monitor recently

because the name seemed familiar. There has been a lot of fraud in the medical/health care fields recently in the Rio Grande Valley that is being prosecuted recently compared to the past.

Thanks for posting.