North Texas podiatrist and patient recruiter convicted in $8.5M health care fraud scheme
A federal jury convicted two North Texas men on Friday for their role in a scheme to fraudulently bill TRICARE millions of dollars for compounded creams that were “medically unnecessary and procured through kickbacks and bribes,” according to the U.S. Justice Department.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Brian Carpenter, 56, of Bridgeport, was a podiatrist who signed prescriptions for compounded pain and scar creams for TRICARE beneficiaries to whom he never spoke and whom he never examined or treated. TRICARE is the health care program for U.S. service members and their families.
Jerry Lee Hawrylak, 69, of Lake Worth, recruited Carpenter to sign the prescriptions and recruited TRICARE beneficiaries to accept the medically unnecessary creams, the Justice Department said in a news release.
From November 2014 to January 2017, Carpenter and Hawrylak caused a Fort Worth-based pharmacy involved in the conspiracy to fraudulently bill TRICARE about $8.5 million for these creams, according to the release.
Carpenter and Hawrylak each were convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and six counts of health care fraud. They are scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 23 and face a maximum of 10 years in prison on each count. A federal district court judge will determine their sentences after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
