While the rest of us go about our lives trying to do the right thing, it appears that some medical professionals in South Florida were working on the big score. One of the doctors caught up in the prescription insurance scam says he chose his friends poorly. I would say that was the least of his sins.
From the Palm Beach Post:
Four indicted in multimillion-dollar health-insurance scam
WEST PALM BEACH — A multimillion-dollar insurance scam kept a pharmacist in a lavish lifestyle, a prominent psychiatrist and chiropractor with a flow of illicit cash, and a neurologist with his own stash of prescription drugs for personal use, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday.
Prosecutors have charged pharmacist Joseph Sutera, psychiatrist Eric Ressner and neurologist Agustin Castellanos, all of northern Palm Beach County, with conspiracy to commit health-care fraud.
According to the indictment, Sutera and his Palm Beach Gardens store, The Medicine Shoppe, submitted more than $17 million in claims over a four-year period, receiving $9.9 million. Most of the money was from fraudulent drug claims — prescriptions never made and never filled.
Defense attorney Jack Goldberger said Ressner’s prominence in the medical community makes his indictment all the more shocking. Ressner spoke with prosecutors, trying to cooperate and explain that he didn’t do anything wrong.
“They chose not believe him and indicted him,” Goldberger said. “If the doctor made any mistake, it was a mistake in judgment, in who he chose to be his friends.”
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