A Florida resident has admitted in federal court that he received more than $300,000 in kickbacks from a pharmacy in New Jersey in a telemarketing prescription scam.
Eric Van Vleet, 30, of Delray Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of New Jersey said in a statement on Thursday.
From 2018 to 2019, Van Vleet operated Hype Med LLC, a company that generated expensive medically unnecessary prescriptions through an elaborate telemarketing scheme, authorities said.
Van Vleet and the company identified Medicare beneficiaries to target for expensive drugs including migraine medications and creams for treatment of pain, scars and eczema, officials said. Hype Med then teamed up with telemedicine companies, which referred the beneficiaries for prescriptions, federal prosecutors said.
Hype Med paid kickbacks to the telemedicine companies and the telemedicine companies paid kickbacks to doctors who approved the prescriptions, authorities said.
Van Vleet then directed the prescriptions to certain pharmacies that his company had kickback agreements with. After getting reimbursed by Medicare, the pharmacies, including Apogee Bio-Pharm LLC in Edison, paid a portion of the reimbursements to Hype Med as a kickback, according to federal prosecutors.
The scheme defrauded Medicare of $1,399,812.52 and Hype Med received a total of $343,683.69 in kickbacks from Apogee, officials said.
Apogee’s former president, Elan Yaish, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute. The principals of Apogee — William Welwart, Ethan Welwart and Gary Kaczka — are charged with health care fraud and other crimes in a separate indictment.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not provide a date for Van Vleet’s sentencing.