Four Sentenced in .3 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme Involving Kickbacks and Bribes

Four Sentenced in $54.3 Million Medicare Fraud Scheme Involving Kickbacks and Bribes

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U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan has sentenced four Florida residents for their involvement in a $54.3 million health care fraud scheme that exploited Medicare through unnecessary prescriptions and kickbacks.

  • Luis Lacerda, 37, of West Palm Beach, received three years and five months in federal prison. He was ordered to forfeit $15,600,333.30 and pay $54,303,526 in restitution.
  • Omar Solari, 36, of Fort Lauderdale, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison, with a forfeiture of $6,341,240.58 and $36,246,251 in restitution.
  • Michael Murphy, 38, of Fort Lauderdale, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $3,650,943.36 and pay $8,374,175 in restitution.
  • Joelson Viveros, 45, of Boca Raton, was sentenced to five years of probation, forfeiting $894,116.45 and paying $3,017,135 in restitution.

From 2018 to 2021, the defendants conspired to defraud Medicare by paying kickbacks and bribes to telemarketers and telemedicine providers to secure prescriptions for medications, mainly topical creams, that beneficiaries neither wanted nor needed.

The scheme involved telemarketers recruiting Medicare beneficiaries and obtaining prescriptions through telemedicine providers who often lacked any physician-patient relationship. Some prescriptions were approved after brief phone calls, while others involved no patient contact at all. The defendants owned and operated pharmacies, including one in Jacksonville, that submitted claims for the unnecessary medications, recycling prescriptions through multiple pharmacies they controlled.

Medicare reimbursed the defendants’ pharmacies more than $54.3 million as part of the conspiracy.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the FBI. Prosecution was led by Assistant U.S. Attorney David B. Mesrobian and Trial Attorney Gary Winters, with forfeiture proceedings managed by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jennifer M. Harrington and Mai Tran.

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