The fraud and abuse laws can sometimes be obtuse, but this is a clear-cut case of intentional fraud.
Grigoriy T. Rodonaia, of Port Neches, Texas, was convicted by a jury of 12 counts of health care fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of making a false statement, and two counts of accepting kickbacks.
Rodonaia, a physician practicing in Beaumont with Rodonaia Family Medicine and Aesthetics, was indicted on March 18, 2020. According to information presented in court, beginning in January 2015, Rodonaia participated in a health care fraud scheme by issuing prescriptions for specially compounded scar creams using the names, dates of birth, and Health Insurance Claim Numbers of TRICARE beneficiaries, and caused the prescriptions to be forwarded directly to Memorial Compounding Pharmacy in Houston, Texas.
These prescriptions were issued without consultation with the patient and without the patient’s knowledge. The prescriptions were billed to the military health care program, TRICARE, by the pharmacy at approximately $9,000 to $13,000 per prescription, with multiple refills authorized per prescription. Rodanaia issued over 600 prescriptions in the names of approximately 140 beneficiaries in furtherance of this scheme.
Before the scheme could be detected, TRICARE paid approximately $6.7 million in TRICARE funds to Memorial Compounding Pharmacy. Further, to conceal his criminal activity, Rodonaia created fictitious patient files and records that falsely indicated that he had examined or consulted with those patients, and submitted those false records to the Defense Health Agency in response to an audit.
Source: The Gilmer Mirror – Jefferson County Doctor Convicted of Health Care Fraud Violations