- Two telemedicine executives have been charged with running an illegal drug scheme.
- The Justice Department said the executives made $100 million by issuing millions of counterfeit prescriptions.
- What’s more, they didn’t back down when it became clear some of their patients had overdosed, the Justice Department alleges.
Two executives from a California-based telemedicine company have been arrested and accused of running an illegal Adderall drug distribution scheme worth $100 million.
The Department of Justice announced in a press release Thursday that it had arrested Lucia He, founder and CEO of Done Global Inc., and David Brody, the digital health company’s clinical president, in California.
The Department of Justice alleges that the two executives committed health care fraud by remotely distributing Adderall and other stimulants to patients for no medical purpose and then filing false claims for reimbursement for the drugs.
Prosecutors accuse the pair of refusing to back down even after they learned a Done member had died of a drug overdose.
“The individuals charged today allegedly ignored the first principle of medicine — ‘do no harm’ — in order to maximize profits, and there is no place for this type of fraudulent activity in our nation’s health care system,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a Department of Justice press release.
Don Health and lawyers for Hee and Brody did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment.
The Department of Justice charges that the defendants lured drug seekers into subscription-based health care services through millions of dollars of deceptive social media advertising.
They then encouraged doctors in their network to prescribe Adderall even when patients didn’t qualify, making $100 million in revenue from more than 40 million prescriptions, prosecutors allege.
According to prosecutors, He and Brody ordered doctors to limit initial consultations with patients to 30 minutes or less and to set up auto-refill options to keep patients’ prescriptions flowing without the need for follow-up appointments.
The defendants also prevented doctors from continuing to treat patients by not paying them for consultations after the initial consultation, prosecutors allege. Ho and Brody paid the doctors based on the number of prescriptions they filled, according to the Justice Department.
The Department of Justice alleges that he and Brody continued with the scheme even after they were informed that people were making social media posts explaining how to use Dawn to gain easy access to Adderall and other addictive drugs.
In addition to the drug conspiracy charges, Ho and Brody were also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice after prosecutors alleged that after they learned of the grand jury subpoenas, they “deleted documents and communications,” communicated through encrypted messages, and failed to provide subpoenaed documents to the grand jury.
The Justice Department said this is the first time someone has been charged with operating an illegal drug distribution scheme through a telehealth company.
Both Hee and Brody face up to 20 years in prison.
