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From 2014 to April 2021, Clergy and Pérez set up numerous retail pharmacies in Miami-Dade County where they allegedly provided prescription drugs to people with private health insurance plans or without health insurance coverage. Illustrative photo
Two residents of Miami (Florida, United States) were sentenced to prison terms for their participation in a criminal plot that < strong>con 9 million dollars to prescription drug savings programs, a fraud carried out through a network of 21 fake pharmacies“who had no real customers and dispensed no medicine,” This Friday the Southern District Prosecutor’s Office.
William Clero, 45, and César Armando Pérez Amador, 52 — arrested in 2021— sentenced to 17 and 7 years in prison, respectively, for defrauding “prescription drug cost-saving programs (coupons)offered by pharmaceutical manufacturers to reduce drug cost. cost of prescription drugs for consumers”.
From 2014 through April 2021, Clero and Pérez established numerous retail pharmacies in Miami-Dade County where they allegedly provided prescription drugs to people with private health insurance plans or without health insurance coverage.
Clero, the ringleader of the scam ring, and Perez “conspired to defraud prescription drug coupon programs by submitting false and fraudulent claims to those programs.”
The result was more than $9 million in payment fraud, he said. The Federal District Attorney for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement.
The authorities linked a total of 21 pharmacies to the fraud scheme of the convicted, some pharmacies that “existed “Just to pass along the false and fraudulent claims,” but that “they had no real customers, no prescriptions, and no drugs dispensed.”
To hide their involvement in the deception, Clergy and Pérez recruited nominal or “ghost” owners. for each pharmacy and included them in corporate, bank and other business records, he explained. the statement.
As part of the scheme, Clero and Pérez transferred most of the profits to the shell companies they controlled, while diverting large amounts of money for their use and personal benefit.