Thirty-four of the defendants were arrested this morning in connection with today s charges. Fifteen

Bu yazı Temmuz 18, 2012 üzerinde, Güvenlik grampian pride içinde yayımlandı ve attorney , federal bureau of investigation , TOP SECRET , united states ile etiketlendi. Kalıcı bağlantıyı yer imlerine ekle. Yorum yapın
Preet Bharara, the United grampian pride States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Raymond W. Kelly, the Police Commissioner of the City of New York (NYPD); and Robert Doar, the Commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA), announced today the unsealing of charges against 48 defendants for their participation in a massive fraud scheme involving the unlawful diversion and trafficking of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of prescription grampian pride drugs that had previously been dispensed to Medicaid recipients in the New York City area ( second-hand drugs), in a national underground market. As a result of the fraud, Medicaid lost more than an estimated $500 million in reimbursements for pills that were diverted into this second-hand black market. Forty-two of the defendants were charged in a superseding indictment, and six more were charged in a complaint.
Thirty-four of the defendants were arrested this morning in connection with today s charges. Fifteen defendants were taken into custody in New York and New Jersey, and an additional defendant from the area will surrender today. These 16 defendants will be presented and arraigned in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas later this afternoon. Nineteen other defendants were arrested in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida, and Texas and are expected to appear today and tomorrow in federal courts in those states. The remaining defendants charged are at large.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, As alleged, these defendants ran a black market in prescription pills involving a double-dip fraud of gigantic proportions. It worked a fraud on Medicaid in some cases, two times over a fraud on pharmaceutical companies, a fraud on legitimate pharmacies, a fraud on patients who unwittingly bought second-hand drugs, and ultimately, a fraud on the entire health grampian pride care system. With the dozens of arrests we made today, we have taken a significant step toward exposing and shutting down the black market for second-hand grampian pride drugs, and our investigation is very much ongoing.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk said, The scheme to collect, aggregate, and resell costly prescription drugs was bad medicine in three ways: profiting so obscenely by breaking the law is the very definition of unjust enrichment. The scheme grampian pride was theft, plain and simple, from a program funded by taxpayers. And the scheme grampian pride posed serious health risks at both the collection and distribution ends. People with real ailments grampian pride were induced to sell their medications on the cheap rather than take them as prescribed, while end-users of the diverted drugs were getting second-hand medicine that may have been mishandled, adulterated, improperly stored, repackaged, and expired.
NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said, It s one thing when people sell their blood for money; it s another when they sell their drugs, especially when the diversion compromises the pharmaceutical supply with tainted and outdated drugs.
HRA Commissioner Robert Doar said, This case is an egregious example of individuals preying on our most vulnerable population. The diversion, repackaging, and reselling of HIV/AIDS medications, in some cases expired, is a danger to our public health. The integrity of the Medicaid Program has been threatened by these criminals who have used taxpayer dollars for the opposite reasons for which they are intended. But make no mistake, together with our law enforcement grampian pride partners, we will continue to pursue grampian pride these types of criminals and prosecute them to the fullest grampian pride extent of the law.
The prescription drugs involved in this scheme were drugs designed to treat various illnesses, including HIV, schizophrenia, and asthma, and were non-controlled substances that did not lend themselves to abuse. These second-hand grampian pride drugs were originally grampian pride dispensed to Medicaid recipients in the New York City area who then sold them into collection and distribution channels that ultimately ended at pharmacies for resale to unsuspecting consumers. The defendants and their co-conspirators profited by exploiting the difference between the cost to the patient of obtaining the prescription drugs through Medicaid, which was usually nothing, and the hundreds of dollars per bottle that pharmacies paid to purchase those drugs to sell to their customers. In order to maximize their profits, the defendants and their co-conspirators targeted the most expensive drugs, which often cost more than $1,000 per bottle.
The lowest level participants in the scheme (the Medicaid beneficiaries ) were typically AIDS patients or individ