A Florida man pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit healthcare fraud in an $8.3 million scheme where pharmacy owners paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketers and telemedicine providers to secure orders for medically unnecessary prescriptions that were billed to Medicare. According to court documents, Michael Murphy, 37, of Fort Lauderdale, invested in Cure Pharmacy in Jacksonville and two other pharmacies that participated in the Medicare program. From in or around November 2019 through in or around March 2021, Murphy and his co-conspirators paid kickbacks and bribes to telemarketing companies in exchange for recruiting Medicare beneficiaries to accept prescriptions for various medications — mainly topical creams — which the beneficiaries usually did not want or need.
Murphy and his co-conspirators also paid kickbacks and bribes to telemedicine companies that employed or contracted with physicians who signed the prescriptions. The physicians had no physician-patient relationship with the beneficiaries and typically signed the prescriptions after a cursory telephone conversation with the beneficiary or with no contact at all. After obtaining Medicare beneficiary information and the signed prescriptions, Murphy and his co-conspirators submitted claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary medications, sometimes through multiple pharmacies they owned and controlled in a practice known as “recycling,” and were reimbursed $8.3 million by Medicare Part D.
