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Mississippi Man Pleads Guilty To Health Care Fraud For His Role in $200 Million Compounding Pharmacy Scheme
Hattiesburg, Miss – Howard Randall Thomley, 60, of Hattiesburg, pled guilty yesterday before U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett to a Criminal Information charging him with health care fraud for his role in a $200 million scheme to defraud health care benefit programs, including TRICARE, announced U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, Special Agent in Charge Christopher Freeze with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Holloman III of IRS Criminal Investigation’s Atlanta Field Office and Special Agent in Charge John F. Khin of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s Southeast Field Office.
Thomley will be sentenced by Judge Starrett on July 2, 2019 and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.
During his guilty plea, Thomley admitted that, from approximately August 2012 through January 2016, he conspired with others to carry out a scheme to defraud TRICARE, which is a federally funded health care benefit program that serves United States military personnel and their families.
Thomley owned and operated a company called Advantage Marketing Professionals, which marketed medications for Advantage Pharmacy, a compounding pharmacy in Hattiesburg. For each prescription submitted by Thomley, Advantage Marketing Professionals and Thomley would receive a percentage of the revenue that Advantage Pharmacy obtained from TRICARE.
Thomley and others associated with Advantage Marketing Professionals recruited beneficiaries of TRICARE and paid them a percentage of the revenue from each prescription – including refills – that they and their families accepted, in order to induce the beneficiaries to accept millions of dollars of expensive compounded medications that were not medically necessary. In order to obtain prescriptions, Thomley and his co-conspirators filled out pre-printed prescription forms with the beneficiaries’ names, and obtained prescriber signatures, knowing that the medical professional prescribing the medication had not examined the recruited beneficiaries. Sometimes, the prescribers had previously signed blank prescription forms, which were later filled in by Thomley or his co-conspirators.
