An Orange County man has pleaded guilty to a scheme that involved the submission of nearly $270 million in fraudulent claims to Medi-Cal, working with two others from Moreno Valley and West Hills, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday, April 7.<\/p>\n
Paul Richard Randall, 66, of Orange, admitted to carrying out the scheme through a pharmacy that billed the state\u2019s Medicaid program for high-cost medications made with low-cost generic ingredients, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
According to court records, Randall worked with Kyrollos Mekail, 37, of Moreno Valley, and Patricia Anderson, 58, of West Hills, to take advantage of a temporary suspension of Medi-Cal\u2019s prior authorization requirement for certain prescriptions, allowing them to bill large sums without the usual review. The claims involved expensive, non-contracted drugs that were unnecessary and, in many cases, never dispensed to patients.<\/p>\n
Between May 2022 and April 2023, the pharmacy submitted more than $269 million in claims and was paid more than $178 million, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Randall also admitted to laundering proceeds from the scheme.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud committed while on release. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 3, where he faces up to 30 years in federal prison.<\/p>\n
Randall has been in federal custody since June 2025.<\/p>\n
Mekail previously pleaded guilty to two counts of health care fraud and is awaiting sentencing. Anderson is charged with two counts of health care fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Orange County man has pleaded guilty to a scheme that involved the submission of nearly $270 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,7,1312,723,47,137,21175,100,171,611,612,136,42357],"class_list":{"0":"post-259967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-crime","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-county","16":"tag-moreno-valley","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-orange","19":"tag-orange-county","20":"tag-riverside-county","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-west-hills"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}