ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A St. Augustine man has pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud in connection with his role in a fraudulent compound pharmacy scheme, officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida said.
Dino Ajloni, 40, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.
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According to the plea agreement, Ajloni, who was the operator of Wellness Pharmacy in St. Augustine, performed various jobs, including marketing prescriptions, recruiting physicians to write and fill prescriptions at Wellness Pharmacy and other jobs.
The U.S. Attorney's Office officials said Ajloni also relied on marketers to help recruit patients to get prescriptions filled at his pharmacy.
One of the marketers brought his family in to become "patients" of Wellness Pharmacy, officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The pharmacy filled numerous prescriptions for the marketer's family and received nearly $200,000 in government reimbursement, officials said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office officials said Ajloni admitted paying the marketer almost $50,000 for the referral of work, in violation of the Anti-Kickback statute.
Ajloni also recruited patients himself. The U.S. Attorney's Office officials said for example, he offered patients access to "anything in the store" if they agreed to receive compound prescription drugs. At other times, he offered gift baskets with chocolate, deodorant, nuts and other accessories to patients that accepted compounded prescriptions.
The U.S. Attorney's Office officials said TRICARE developed suspicions in 2016 regarding the legitimacy of these compound prescriptions.
Because the vast majority of Wellness Pharmacy's claims were purportedly written by a doctor who had never separately billed for these patient visits, officials with the U.S. Attorney's office said TRICARE asked Wellness Pharmacy to complete an audit.
Ajloni and others made a variety of false and misleading statements during the course of the audit, officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Among other things, Ajloni noted that all patients paid co-pays, no patient was offered anything of value to receive prescriptions and that Wellness Pharmacy called the doctor prior to dispensing the prescriptions.
The U.S. Attorney's Office officials said Ajloni received $1,916,206.97 in healthcare reimbursement that he was not otherwise entitled to receive.