Ocean Springs businessmen get prison for fraud that bilked Medicare, TRICARE of millions

Two Ocean Springs businessmen have been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty in an $18 million health care fraud scheme involving prescription compound pain creams.

Dempsey “Bryan” Levi, 51, and Jeffrey Wayne Rollins, 44, were sentenced to serve seven years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release Wednesday.

They were ordered to pay $16,333,583 in restitution to Medicare, military insurer TRICARE and Express Scripts. The government also received $924,114.40 seized during the investigation.

The businessmen had pleaded guilty in October to one count each of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Levi, Rollins and Levi’s late brother, Clark Levi, according to the criminal 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.

Rollins, Dempsey Bryan Levi and others invested in Garden’s Pharmacy, formerly Lovelace Drugs, and other companies, including Alvix Laboratories, also in Ocean Springs, to help further the scheme.

Levi and Rollins pleaded guilty to getting recruiters to obtain prescriptions for the expensive medications “with numerous refills,” the Attorney’s Office said.

The recruiters were paid a percentage of reimbursements to the pharmacy from taxpayer-funded health care programs like Medicare and TRICARE. It is illegal to pay commissions on referrals to federal programs.

The two also pleaded guilty to incentivizing doctors to authorize prescriptions for the medications.

The prescriptions were written, the complaint said, based on how much money they would bring in from the health insurers, and not on medical need. Some patients never saw a doctor before receiving a prescription.

The alleged crimes occurred between January 2014 and May 2019.

The FBI raided Garden’s Pharmacy on May 30, 2019.

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.

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-dollar, multi-agency investigation into health care 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.

The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathlyn R. Van Buskirk, and trial attorneys Dustin Davis and Sara Porter from the DOJ Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.

Sun Herald reporter Margaret Baker contributed to this report.

This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 4:19 PM.