Florida: Miami Pharmacy Owner Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Medicaid Fraud

January 29, 2008 -- TALLAHASSEE, FL – Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that a Miami pharmacy owner was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in a Medicaid Fraud scheme that defrauded the Florida Medicaid program out of more than $400,000. John Darrell Boyd was charged with using his Miami-based pharmacy, Safety Drugs, to fraudulently bill the program for prescription medications primarily for treating organ transplant patients. Boyd was arrested by the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in 2002 and was prosecuted by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit through the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

An investigation by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit revealed that Boyd, 66, used patient identities from billing records of other pharmacies previously owned by Boyd and his former partner. None of the 27 Medicaid recipients whose Medicaid accounts were billed for these expensive medications had ever received an organ transplant nor did they receive medications billed through Safety Drugs. Boyd was arrested and in 2007 he pleaded guilty to two counts of grand theft and four counts of Medicaid fraud.

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Boyd, who has a prior federal conviction for drug smuggling, was sentenced by Judge Dava Tunis with the Miami-Dade County Circuit Courts. He will also be required to reimburse the state $125,000 for the investigative costs. In addition to his prison sentence, Boyd must serve 10 years of probation and must complete 1,000 hours of community service. After the sentence was announced, Boyd was immediately remanded into custody.

Source: Florida Attorney General