The wealthy Republican donor who took campaign money as investments from now-expelled lawmaker Jeremy Durham has agreed to pay $7.75 million to settle allegations he and his brother defrauded a federal military health care program through their pharmaceutical business in Florida, reports The Tennessean.
Andy Miller and his brother Tracy Miller operate Healthmark Investment Trust, which has an ownership stake in a Florida company called QMedRx Inc., according to a settlement agreement from Middle District of Florida U.S. Attorney A. Lee Bentley III.
Bentley’s office accuses the Millers and QMedRx of submitting fraudulent claims for reimbursement from TRICARE, a federal health care program for military members and their families.
The government sought penalties and fines from the owners who participated in the fraud, according to a news release issued Sept. 14.
“The United States attorney’s office is committed to protecting TRICARE and other federal health care programs from fraud,” Bentley said in a news release. “Those who violate the anti-kickback statute to generate business will be held accountable.”
A spokesman for the office declined to comment beyond the information included in the settlement agreement. The agreement — which indicates the settlement is neither an admission of guilt from the Millers nor a concession of a weak case from the federal government — shows the pattern of a kickback fraud scheme.
Bentley’s office says QMedRx violated the federal “anti-kickback statute,” a law that bans the exchange of anything valuable in order to receive a referral for business with a federal health care program. The settlement says people were paid incentives to get from doctors costly compound prescriptions, made through combining several different medications. Those prescriptions were then paid for by the federal government through the TRICARE program.
…Miller said the people who obtained the prescriptions from the doctors were classified as contract workers, and the government said they were employees of QMedRx.
“The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations against QMedRx only, and there has been no determination of liability, but to avoid delay, uncertainty, inconvenience and expense of protracted litigation, we agreed to settle for a portion of our profits,” Miller said in an email to The Tennessean.
…Miller and his family own several health care companies and are big donors for some Republican candidates. That includes Durham, who also invested some of his own campaign funds into one of Miller’s companies. State campaign finance regulators found out about the investment while investigating Durham’s campaign finances, which show a $191,000 discrepancy between his campaign finance report and his bank accounts.