Ocean Springs pharmacy co-owners charged in $18 million TRICARE healthcare fraud scheme
Two Ocean Springs men are the latest in a series of high-profile businessmen accused in a federal criminal complaint of taking kickbacks in an $18 million healthcare fraud scheme involving compound prescription pain creams.
Dempsey Bryan Levi and Jeffrey Wayne Rollins are accused in a federal complaint of conspiracy and attempt to defraud the federal government in the multi-million dollar scheme targeting military insurer, TRICARE, and other private insurance companies.
Levi and Rollins pleaded not guilty during their first court appearance in U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg last week. Both are free on a $100,000 unsecured bond pending trial. The trials are tentatively set for the Dec. 7 federal court calendar.
If convicted, each is facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Levi and Rollins, the complaint says, and other co-conspirators, including Levi’s late brother, Clark Levi, allegedly paid and received kickbacks and other bribes in exchange for promoting high-priced compound prescriptions and then marketing them for sales to people who often didn’t need the medications.
Rollins was among those who had invested in Garden’s pharmacy, or Lovelace Drugs and other companies, including Alvix Laboratories, also in Ocean Springs.
Some who received the expensive medications never saw a doctor for a medical examination, the complaint says, before they received the drugs.
The prescriptions that were written were based on how much money they would bring in, not medical need, according to the government.
Levi, his late brother, Rollins and others allegedly fraudulently created, prescribed and dispensed the expensive medications at their own pharmacy — Garden’s Pharmacy on Washington Avenue (formally known as Lovelace Drugs) and then fraudulently billed insurers for millions of dollars.
The alleged crimes occurred between January 2014 and May 2019.
The FBI raided Garden’s Pharmacy on May 30, 2019.
The government named some of the businesses that allegedly assisted Levi and Rollins and other alleged co-conspirators in the healthcare fraud scheme:
- Garden’s Pharmacy (formally known as Lovelace Drugs) on Washington Avenue in Ocean Springs that began operations in 2013 after Clark Levi and other created the business.
- Advantage Pharmacy in Hattiesburg, that formed in 2008 and four years later began primarily dealing in the production of compound medications
- Alvix Laboratories in Ocean Springs that formed in 2005, records say, initially as a consulting company but by mid-2014, had begun to operations involving the repacking and distribution of pharmaceuticals. Levi and other unnamed conspirators allegedly owned, operated controlled and managed Alvix with the the intent to market and further distribute the expensive compound creams and other prescriptions to pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers.
- Affordable Medication Solutions that formed in 2014 near Monroe, Louisiana, and allegedly helped provide co-payment information for patients and other that were then dispensed through Garden’s Pharmacy in Ocean Springs.
- Medical Solutions, of Ocean Springs that formed in 2013 and was also in the same building as Garden’s Pharmacy.
- Pittsburgh Medical Marketing in Ocean Springs that formed in 2014 and was one of the companies to allegedly receive “kickbacks and bribes” through Garden’s Pharmacy that were then paid out to participating doctors and compound medication recruiters.
- Marketing Company 1 that formed in 2009 in Chesapeake, Virginia, allegedly solicited and recruited namely doctors to write prescriptions for the compound medications that were later dispensed through Garden’s Pharmacy.
- Marketing Company 2 that formed in 2014 in Oakland County, Michigan, for the purpose of writing compound medication prescriptions that were filled at Garden’s Pharmacy.
Some of the owners of the other businesses involved have already pleaded guilty to federal crimes as part of the healthcare fraud investigation.
They include Hattiesburg business owners Wade Walters, Hope Thomley, Randy Thomley and Doyle Beach, Ridgeland pharmacist Tommy Spell and Monroe, Louisiana, pharmacist Joseph Wiley, among others.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 5:50 AM.
