A federal jury in the Eastern District of New York convicted a New York man for his role in conspiracies to commit health care fraud, illegally distribute Suboxone, and pay and receive illegal health care kickbacks.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Tony Brown-Arkah, 78, of New York, was the owner of American Medical Centres, a medical clinic in Brooklyn that purported to provide substance abuse treatment.
AMC lured patients to the clinic by illegally prescribing them Suboxone, a Schedule III narcotic designed to treat opioid use disorder, which, as one witness testified, is commonly abused by prison inmates by boiling the medication and dripping it into users’ eyes.
Mr Brown-Arkah allowed a drug ring to proliferate inside and on the steps of his clinic, where drug dealers offered to buy patients’ Suboxone prescriptions for cash. One witness testified that an AMC staff member directed him to a van outside where he could sell his Suboxone if he did not want it.
Many patients at Mr Brown-Arkah’s clinic received prescriptions signed by a nurse practitioner in Florida who had not seen or spoken with them. When they visited AMC, patients were met with a façade of substance abuse treatment and were required to undergo invasive, medically unnecessary testing in order to get Suboxone prescriptions.
Mr Brown-Arkah billed Medicare and Medicaid for services that were never provided, including office visits in which he, who was not a medical provider, was the only AMC staffer to meet with the patient. The evidence established that patients at AMC were frequently prescribed Suboxone when they were not taking the medication.
Witnesses testified that these prescriptions were not medically necessary and can be dangerous, and that the lack of Suboxone in a patient’s laboratory results is a significant warning sign of illegal diversion.
To fuel his scheme, Mr Brown-Arkah paid illegal cash kickbacks to patients. One of these illegal payments was caught on video by a confidential source. In the undercover recording, Mr Brown-Arkah described others who paid patients illegal kickbacks and billed for medically unnecessary services, saying “that’s why they go to jail . . . that’s when the government busts ‘em!”
Mr Brown-Arkah funnelled patients to receive medically unnecessary laboratory testing. He received thousands of dollars in monthly kickbacks from the laboratory in exchange for these referrals.
To conceal the kickbacks, the defendant created a shell company and a sham contract and lied to law enforcement about the purpose of the payments. In total, Mr Brown-Arkah and his co-conspirators caused over $52 million in false claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
The jury convicted Mr Brown-Arkah of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, 12 counts of health care fraud, conspiracy to illegally distribute narcotics, three counts of illegal distribution of narcotics, conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks and to defraud the United States, and two counts of receipt of kickbacks.
A sentencing date has not been set. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on each health care fraud, narcotics, and kickbacks conviction, and five years in prison on the conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks and defraud the U.S.
