A federal workers’ compensation program paid $16,000 for a prescription drug that cost about $15 to the pharmacy, prosecutors said Monday.
The Justice Department said it had won a 17-year sentence against Dehshid “David” Nourian, the operator of a string of pharmacies who bilked the government out of tens of millions of dollars by filling bogus prescription orders.
Prosecutors said Nourian paid doctors to prescribe unnecessary compound creams to injured federal workers, then filled those orders with extravagant markups.
In one three-year period, the Texas pharmacies controlled by Nourian billed the Labor Department’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Program and Blue Cross Blue Shield more than $145 million in unnecessary prescriptions, and was paid more than $90 million.
Nourian then tried to shield the money from federal income taxes.
A jury convicted Nourian and co-conspirators in 2023.
Federal officials said Nourian is forfeiting $405 million in assets. That’s a record for a federal health care fraud case.
He has also been ordered to pay $115 million in restitution.
Prosecutors said the bribes paid to doctors ran into the millions of dollars — and were quite lucrative.
“This 17-year sentence sends a clear message that our prosecutors, working shoulder-to-shoulder with our investigative partners, will identify, investigate, and prosecute even the most sophisticated fraud schemes that target taxpayer money and endanger patients,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.
The Justice Department said the creams were mixed in pharmacy back rooms by “untrained teenagers” at a cost of about $15 per prescription, then billed to the government for as much as $16,000.
“Patients who received the creams testified at trial to the creams’ ineffectiveness and, in some instances, that using the creams resulted in painful, irritating skin rashes,” the department said.
