The Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release on Thursday, announcing that New York pharmacy owner Robert John Sabet had pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and unlawfully spending the proceeds of the fraud, which totaled $6.8 million.
John Robert Sabet owned two New York City pharmacies. The press release details that Sabet “conspired to bill Medicare and Medicaid for expensive prescription drugs that were not needed by patients, were dispensed in connection with kickbacks, or, in some cases, not dispensed at all.”
The complaint that Sabet pled guilty to alleged that he and his associates provided customers or potential customers with kickbacks or bribes in an effort to get them to fill their prescriptions at one of his two pharmacies. Further, the defendant paid the customers cash so that he would be able to bill Medicare and Medicaid for over-the-counter health and care-related products.
The proceeds from Sabet’s illegal scheme allowed him to purchase multiple luxury items, which included a 2020 Porsche Taycan estimated to be worth $250,000.
After Sabet’s guilty plea to both health care fraud and committing unlawful financial transactions, he was scheduled to be sentenced on July 29, 2022 with a maximum potential sentence of 10 years in prison. The press release explains that a federal district court judge will be responsible for determining the ultimate sense after considering U.S. sentencing guidelines and statutory factors.
