Month: May 2022

Source: United States Department of Justice News

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Scott Weinbloom, age 47, of Latham, New York, was ordered detained yesterday on a charge of possessing child pornography.

The announcement was made by United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

According to the complaint, Weinbloom possessed images and videos of child pornography on an encrypted thumb drive located at his residence on May 18, 2022. 

The charges in the complaint are merely accusations. The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Weinbloom had a detention hearing yesterday before United States Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart, and was ordered detained pending trial.  If convicted of possessing child pornography, Weinbloom faces up to 20 years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000, and a term of post-imprisonment supervised release of at least 5 years and up to life.   A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, and other factors. 

This case is being investigated by the FBI and its Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes investigators from the New York State Police and Colonie Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Segovia.

This case is being prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood.  Launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, Project Safe Childhood is led by United States Attorney’s offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Lisa. And thank you to all of you for joining us to commemorate the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act. As we mourn with the families of the horrific attacks of hate this past week, all of us here today – DOJ, HHS, and agencies across the federal government; legislators and other government officials; advocates like Susan Bro and Haifa and Victoria Jabara; civil rights and community-based groups; public health professionals; victim services; and law enforcement partners across the country – we must leverage all of our expertise to combat hate. Together, we can – and we must – make real this nation’s promise of justice and equality under the law.

As the Deputy Attorney General just discussed, we use our criminal enforcement authority to prosecute those who commit hate crimes. But it is not enough to wait until a crime occurs – we must address hate well before it escalates to violence. The department uses all of its tools to combat hate and mediate conflict to ensure that communities remain safe and feel protected.

Many acts of hate are unlawful under civil antidiscrimination laws, and the department vigorously enforces these civil rights laws to ensure that people are free from harassment in schools, employment, housing, public accommodations and elsewhere. 

For example, in October 2021, the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah announced a settlement agreement with a school district to address race discrimination in the district’s schools, including serious and widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian-American students by both staff and students.

Another critical tool is the department’s Community Relations Service (CRS), which has been revitalized under Attorney General Garland’s leadership. CRS provides facilitated dialogue, mediation, training, and consultation services to help de-escalate tensions and help unite communities facing bias-related conflict. We are so please that Paul Monteiro has recently been confirmed as CRS’s new director. Paul can you please stand?   

The department also seeks to develop resources that can help empower communities targeted by hate and that provide effective strategies that the department, government officials, and law enforcement can use to engage with and serve those communities. 

Under the Attorney General’s directive, I designated one of my deputies – Rachel Rossi who is here today – as the department’s first-ever Hate Crimes Resources Coordinator to help develop these resources.  Rachel has done an extraordinary job working with community-based and advocacy groups and the U.S. Attorneys’ offices across the country to create and centralize the Department’s anti-hate crime and incident resources. 

Yesterday, Rachel was announced as the new Director of the Office to Access to Justice.  I am so grateful for her extraordinary work as coordinator. I am pleased to announce that Saeed Mody – a longtime veteran in the Civil Rights Division – has joined my office and will soon assume the coordinator role. 

Of course, these resources are not useful if they cannot be accessed by the communities they are intended to help. That is why the department has focused on translating the resources that are most relevant to communities impacted by hate. For example, translating the Civil Rights Division’s online reporting portal into at least 24 languages, including eighteen of the most frequently spoken AAPI languages in the United States. 

But translation alone is not enough. We have also sought to increase cultural competency both within the department and among our state, local, territorial and Tribal partners through trainings and other resources. How we engage with communities impacted by hate crimes can be crucial to establishing a lasting relationship of trust.

We are so pleased that Ana will be leading these language access efforts.

Finally, we use grants to fund a diverse array of programs to help prevent hate crimes and serve communities impacted by hate. The Attorney General highlighted the new Jabara-Heyer No Hate Act and the community-based grant programs, which will complement several other important grant programs, including the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Program, that fund programs for hate crime victim services, protection of houses of worship, trainings for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and much more.

The horrific events of this past week are painful reminders of the hard work we have left to do. We in the department stand with all of you in our shared commitment to build a more perfect, more just, and a more equal, union.

I am now going to pass it back to the Attorney General for closing remarks.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

This week, a federal judge in Greeneville, Tennessee, sentenced seven individuals and seven related corporate entities for their roles in a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme.     

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Peter Bolos and his co-conspirators, Michael Palso, Andrew Assad, Scott Roix, Larry Smith, Mihir Taneja, Arun Kapoor and Maikel Bolos, as well as various companies owned or controlled by some of these individuals, deceived pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), such as Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, regarding tens of thousands of prescriptions. The PBMs processed and approved claims for prescription drugs on behalf of insurance companies. Bolos and his co-conspirators defrauded the PBMs into authorizing millions of dollars’ worth of claims that private insurers such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, and public insurers such as Medicaid and TRICARE, paid to pharmacies controlled by the co-conspirators.

Peter Bolos was convicted by a federal jury in December 2021. Roix, Assad, Palso, Smith, Maikel Bolos, and various associated business entities pleaded guilty to their roles in the conspiracy. Taneja, Kapoor, and Sterling Knight pleaded guilty to felony misbranding in a conspiracy with Bolos. U.S. District Judge J. Ronnie Greer imposed sentences this week for all of the defendants except Roix, whose sentencing hearing was rescheduled for June 15, 2022.

On May 16, the court sentenced Bolos to 14 years in prison and $2.5 million in forfeiture. On the same date, the court also sentenced Palso, 48, of Lutz, Florida, to 33 months in prison. Bolos and Palso also were each ordered to pay nearly $25 million in restitution.

On May 17, the court sentenced Smith, 52, of Tampa, to 42 months of imprisonment. The now-defunct corporate entities that Smith created, Alpha Omega Pharmacy, Germaine Pharmacy, Zoetic Pharmacy, ULD Wholesale LLC, and Tanith Enterprises, all were sentenced to pay nearly $25 million in restitution. The court also sentenced Taneja, 47, of Tampa, to 10 months of imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. 

On May 18, the court sentenced Kapoor, 48, of Temple Terrace, Florida, to three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. Sterling Knight, a now-defunct corporate entity that Kapoor and Taneja created, was sentenced to pay $21 million in restitution. The court also sentenced Maikel Bolos, 36, of Tampa, to 15 months of imprisonment and a $25,000 fine.

On May 19, the court sentenced Assad, 37, of Tampa, to 24 months of imprisonment and to pay nearly $25 million in restitution. HealthRight was sentenced to pay $4.25 million in restitution.

“The significant sentences imposed by the court reflect the seriousness of this large-scale fraud scheme, in which the defendants deceived consumers in order to facilitate the distribution of drugs without proper medical oversight, and overbilled insurers for illegal prescriptions,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Arun G. Rao, head of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch. “The department will continue to work with law enforcement partners to prosecute those who take advantage of telemedicine to perpetrate fraud schemes that violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”

“The scale of the prescription-drug fraud scheme orchestrated by these defendants and their conspirators was astonishing, and the court’s prison sentences reflect the seriousness of their crimes,” said U.S. Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III for the Eastern District of Tennessee.  “The financial harm caused by health care fraud hurts all Americans, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee will continue to support the cooperation among its federal law enforcement partners that is necessary to bring criminal swindlers like these defendants to justice.”

“This sentencing is the result of a multi-agency investigation into a complex telemedicine pharmacy fraud scheme, requiring substantial investigative resources,” said Special Agent in Charge Joseph E. Carrico of the FBI Knoxville Field Office. “The FBI, with its law enforcement partners, will remain vigilant to assure that unscrupulous individuals who exploit our health care system are brought to justice.”

“Distributing misbranded prescription drugs in the U.S. marketplace places patients’ health at risk,” said Special Agent in Charge Justin C. Fielder of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) Miami Field Office. “We will continue to pursue and bring to justice those who put profits ahead of public health.”

“Bolos and his co-conspirators abandoned their responsibilities in the health care industry through an elaborate fraud scheme and manipulated the system without regard for patient need or medical necessity to line their pockets,” said Special Agent in Charge John Condon of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Tampa. “These significant sentences should serve as a warning to anyone who attempts to deceive the government and steal from taxpayers.”

“Providers who solicit beneficiaries’ personal information and use it to defraud federal health care programs not only undermine the integrity of those programs; they also divert valuable taxpayer dollars for self-serving purposes,” said Special Agent in Charge Tamala E. Miles of the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “HHS-OIG is proud to work alongside our law enforcement partners to investigate and hold accountable perpetrators of federal health care fraud.”

“The U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General, will continue to vigorously investigate those who commit frauds against federal benefit programs and the U.S. Postal Service,” said Special Agent in Charge Matthew Modafferi of the U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General Northeast Area Field Office. “The sentences in this case sends a clear message to pharmaceutical companies that tactics like these will not be tolerated. The U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General would like to thank our law enforcement partners and the Department of Justice for their dedication and efforts in this investigation.”

“Today’s sentencing holds the conspirators accountable for their reprehensible scheme that mislead patients and defrauded the federal government,” said Special Agent in Charge Amy K. Parker of OPM OIG. “The OPM OIG, along with our law enforcement partners, is committed to investigating individuals that seek to enrich themselves at the expense of patients, taxpayers, and the federal healthcare programs.”

Court documents and evidence at trial established that Bolos, Assad, and Palso owned and operated Synergy Pharmacy in Palm Harbor, Florida. Under their direction, Synergy employed Roix, a Florida telemarketer operating under the name HealthRight, to generate prescriptions for Synergy and the other pharmacies involved in the scheme. The prescriptions were typically for drugs such as pain creams, scar creams and vitamins. Evidence showed that to obtain the prescriptions, Roix used HealthRight’s telemarketing platform as a telemedicine service, cold-calling consumers and deceiving them into agreeing to accept the drugs and to provide their personal insurance information. HealthRight then paid doctors to authorize the prescriptions through its telemedicine platform, even though the doctors never communicated directly with the patients and relied solely on the telemarketers’ screening process as the basis for their authorizations. Because this faulty and fraudulent process made the prescriptions invalid, the drugs were misbranded under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Evidence showed that Synergy and the other pharmacies nonetheless dispensed the drugs to consumers as part of the scheme so that Bolos could submit fraudulent reimbursement claims.

Court documents and evidence at trial further established that during the conspiracy, which lasted from May 2015 through April 2018, Bolos and Palso, along with Assad, paid Roix millions of dollars to buy at least 60,000 invalid prescriptions generated by HealthRight. Evidence showed that Bolos selected specific medications for the prescriptions that he could submit for profitable reimbursements at inflated prices, and that Bolos, Palso, and Assad used illegal means to hide this activity from the PBMs so it could remain undetected.

The convictions resulted from a multi-year investigation conducted by the HHS-OIG (Nashville); FDA-OCI (Nashville); U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General (Buffalo); FBI (Knoxville and Johnson City, Tennessee); OPM-OIG (Atlanta); and HSI (Tampa). The U.S. Marshals Service also assisted in the investigation and the forfeiture of assets.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mac Heavener of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee and Senior Trial Attorney David Gunn of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch in Washington are prosecuting the case. They were assisted by Barbra Pemberton, Bryan Brandenburg and April Denard from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.   

Source: United States Department of Justice News

The Department of Justice today released the following statement from spokesman Anthony Coley:

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) invoked its authority under Title 42 due to the unprecedented public-health dangers caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. CDC has now determined, in its expert opinion, that continued reliance on this authority is no longer warranted in light of the current public-health circumstances. That decision was a lawful exercise of CDC’s authority.

“The Department of Justice intends to appeal the court’s decision in Louisiana et al. v. CDC et al.”