A Mississippi man pleaded guilty in US District Court in Nashville, to conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks. Vernon Sanders, 54, of Meridian, Mississippi, and owner of FastScripts, LLC, was charged in August with conspiring with unnamed co-conspirators to solicit and receive kickbacks and defraud the Medicare Program of $3,381,434. Sanders was the owner of a marketing company and a patient broker who referred Medicare beneficiaries to laboratories in exchange for kickbacks and bribes. Sanders paid marketers to recruit Medicare patients to provide their genetic material, which he then referred to laboratories for Cancer genomic (“CGx”) testing in exchange for kickbacks. CGx testing uses DNA sequencing to detect mutations in genes that could indicate a higher risk of developing certain types of cancers in the future. Sanders also paid kickbacks to doctors for signed orders for CGx tests, without regard for the medical necessity of the tests. Sanders was aware that these tests had been procured through the payment of kickbacks, including kickbacks he paid to a physician in Loretto, Tennessee, another co-conspirator. Sanders also paid illegal kickbacks to telemedicine companies in exchange for signed doctors’ orders for genetic testing.
