By Joe Eaton | February 08, 2011 The
Center for Public Integrity
In early 2010, Medicare paid $135,000 to a discount pharmacy in Hialeah, Fla. for drug prescriptions written by four doctors.
There were only a few problems. First, two of the doctors were dead. A third doctor was alive, living in Portland, Ore., but he never wrote the prescriptions. The fourth doctor was a few months into a three-year prison sentence, according to federal court records, for conspiracy to commit Medicare fraud.
In October, Renier Vicente Rodriguez Fleitas, 60, owner of Pirifer Phamacy and Discount and a former lieutenant colonel in the Cuban military, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit health care fraud. He is currently serving a 37-month sentence.
According to his attorney, Rodriguez was simply a homeless person serving as a straw man for more organized criminals who used his name to set up the pharmacy and divert money from Medicare.
“He was given rent and food to sign some documents to be president of the company,” lawyer Sabrina Vora-Puglisi said, adding that the organizers also paid for a plane ticket to Cuba.
(Original here.)
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