Genesee County Prosecutor's Office
David Leyton, Prosecutor
|
|
Genesee County Prosecutor's Office David Leyton, Prosecutor |
|
GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan -- A doctor, a pharmacist and a business partner were charged today in what officials allege is a wide-scale prescription drug mill.
Brandi M. Jenson, 52, a medical doctor from Wayne County; her business partner, Timothy C. Desano, 50, of Flat Rock; and a Canadian pharmacist, Manish A. Patel, who owns two pharmacies in Genesee County, were arrested Tuesday night.
Sheriff Robert J. Pickell said the three worked together to bilk Medicare and Medicaid out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jenson, officials said, would do a pseudo-physical examination of a patient, then ask what drugs they wanted. She would then send them to pharmacies owned by Patel -- Green's Pharmacy in Flint Township and Flint Pharmacy in the city -- that would fill the prescriptions and give Jenson a kickback. Police shut down the pharmacies Tuesday night.
Medicare and Medicaid were billed for the exams and the prescriptions, or an alleged patient would pay $175 cash for the exam.
Police said the patients often would turn around and sell the drugs for a large profit.
"This was a major professional drug operation," Pickell said. "She was making a great deal of money doing bogus physicals and writing prescriptions and charging Medicare."
Prosecutor David Leyton said all three are charged with racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, obtaining personal property by false pretenses greater than $20,000, delivery of codeine, delivery of Vicodin and two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
They were arraigned today and a judge set bond at $36,000 each. If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison.
Pickell said Jenson had been operating in Genesee County for about three years. The Sheriff's Posse, a collaboration among Lapeer and Genesee county sheriffs, Flint police and the FBI, began investigating when it heard about a large amount of prescription drugs on the street.
An undercover agent obtained prescriptions from Jenson, who would go to
people's homes and eventually opened a clinic that had a pharmacy in Mt. Morris
Township.
"On one day she wrote in excess of 50 prescriptions for Vicodin, Tylenol 4 and
codeine cough syrup," Pickell said.
A search warrant of homes owned by Jenson, Patel and Desano turned up large amounts of cash.
Pickell said police also found that Patel deposited more than $2.5 million in bank accounts in the past three months.
"One of the great tragedies is that these people were entrusted to look over the health of the citizenry," Pickell said. "They sold out that trust for money."
Pickell said as much of a concern as the criminal enterprise is the fact that the drugs were being sold on the street level.
"It's a killer," he said, adding in the past year the county medical examiner's office has reported 36 deaths from prescription drugs. "These drugs are a huge problem, not just in the city, but in the whole county."