A federal grand jury indicted four men for their roles in a massive compounded medication fraud and kickback scheme they ran out of a pharmacy in Clifton, New Jersey. Jeffrey Andrews, 68, of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania; Chad Beene, 47, of Philadelphia; and Adam Brosius, 55, and Robert Schneiderman, 77, both of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, are charged with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, healthcare fraud, conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, and violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute. They will be arraigned at a date to be determined. In early 2014, Brosius, Beene, Andrews, and Schneiderman started using Main Avenue Pharmacy, a mail-order pharmacy with a storefront in Clifton, to run a large fraud and kickback scheme involving compounded drugs like scar creams, pain creams, migraine mediation, and vitamins. The scheme revolved around identifying compounded drugs that would yield exorbitant reimbursements from health insurers, including both federal and commercial payers. The defendants figured out which compounds were paying the highest reimbursements by having its pharmacists engage in a practice known as “test billing:” the pharmacist would submit a phony claim to insurance to see which compound would generate the highest reimbursements. Main Avenue also received tips from other pharmacies and marketing companies about which compounds were generating the highest reimbursements. On compounded medications alone, Main Avenue received over $34 million in reimbursements from healthcare benefit programs. Approximately $8 million of that total was paid by federal payers.
