Ocean Springs pharmacy owners plead guilty in multi-million dollar TRICARE fraud scheme
Two Ocean Springs men are facing up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 fines after admitting Wednesday they accepted kickbacks in an $18 million healthcare fraud scheme involving prescription compound pain creams.
Dempsey Bryan Levi and Jeffrey Wayne Rollins pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud before Judge Keith Starrett at the William M. Colmer federal courthouse in Hattiesburg.
The two admitted they took part in an organized scheme — including paying bribes — that bilked military insurer TRICARE, Medicare and other private plans out of millions of dollars for the expensive medications.
In an agreement with the government, each of the men agreed to forfeit to the government the following amount of money they received as part of the scheme:
- $895,730 from a Merchants & Marine account in the name of Alvix Laboratories
- $28,383 from a Merchants & Marine account in the name of Garden’s Pharmacy.
Levi, dressed in black suit jacket and gray pants, Rollins, in a blue suit, both wore masks and listened while Assistant U.S. Kathlyn Van Buskirk read the allegations against them from a bill of information charging them in the case.
Both men and their attorneys declined to comment after court adjourned.
Levi, Rollins and Levi’s late brother, Clark Levi, according to the complaint, participated in a scheme to take kickbacks and pay bribes in exchange for promoting compound prescriptions and marketing them to patients who didn’t need them.
Of those who received the medications, some had never seen a doctor for a medical exam before they received the drugs.
The prescriptions were written, the complaint says, based on how much money they would bring in from the health insurers, and not on medical need.
The alleged crimes occurred between January 2014 and May 2019.
The FBI raided Garden’s Pharmacy on May 30, 2019.
The government identified a number of businesses that assisted Levi and Rollins and other alleged co-conspirators in the healthcare fraud scheme:
- Garden’s Pharmacy (formerly 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.
- Medical Solutions 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.
Dempsey Bryan Levi and Rollins are just the latest in a string of doctors, nurses and others who had already pleaded guilty to federal crimes in the multi-million multi-agency investigation into healthcare fraud involving compound medications.
They include Hattiesburg business owners Wade Walters, Hope Thomley, Randy Thomley and Doyle Beach, Ridgeland pharmacist Tommy Spell, Monroe, Louisiana, pharmacist Joseph Wiley and Biloxi Dr. Albert Diaz, among others.
Bryan Levi, Kelly Levi, and Rollins also are suing the estate of Clark Levi over millions of dollars they say the late Levi owed them to buy their shares in Alvix Laboratories as a well a portion of the profits Alvix brought in.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 4:53 PM.
