A pharmacist who formerly owned and operated Medicap pharmacy in Spencer, Iowa, and defrauded Medicaid and his own health insurance provider, was sentenced on September 21, 2011, to more than 3 years in federal prison.
David J. Easton, age 58, from Everly, Iowa, received the prison term after a September 17, 2010, guilty plea to two counts of health care fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft.
At the plea hearing, Easton admitted that, from about 2003 to 2006, he defrauded Medicaid and Coventry Health Care out of more than $200,000 by submitting false claims for prescriptions. He used the identities and identification numbers of Medicaid patients when he submitted false prescription claims to the Medicaid program. Easton used some of the proceeds of his schemes to purchase a Cadillac Escalade.
Easton was sentenced in Sioux City by Senior United States District Court Judge Donald E. O’Brien. Easton was sentenced to 42 months’ imprisonment to be followed by 2 years of supervised release after the prison term. A special assessment of $200 was imposed, and he was ordered to make $165,170 in restitution to Medicaid and $35,616 in restitution to Coventry Health Care. There is no parole in the federal system.
Easton was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Peter Deegan and Marty McLaughlin and investigated by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 10-4084 DEO.|
