Kyle Adams, Daniel Castro and Jeremy Syto pleaded guilty in federal court, admitting their roles in a San Diego based fraud scheme that bilked the military healthcare program known as TRICARE out of more than $65 million.

At the same time, the alleged ringleaders of this scheme were charged with additional crimes. Jimmy and Ashley Collins, a civilian married couple living in Cleveland, Tennessee, were originally charged in January 2018. They were charged on June 9, 2020 with additional crimes related to their operation of the scheme.

The defendants admitted they illegallly recruited TRICARE patients to receive extraordinarily expensive and largely unnecessary prescription compounded drugs – which cost TRICARE an average of more than $14,500 per medication per month. They induced the patients to sign up by offering monthly payments to participate in a bogus “medical evaluation,” when, in fact, no medical evaluation was taking place.

Although compounded drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they are properly prescribed when a physician determines that an FDA-approved medication does not meet the health needs of a particular patient, such as if a patient requires a particular dosage or application or is allergic to a dye or other ingredient.

The three worked as recruiters for Jimmy and Ashley Collins. At the Collins’ direction, the defendants recruited TRICARE beneficiaries by promising to pay them to evaluate the medications as part of an ongoing medical study, when in reality, no study was taking place.

Once a recruiter convinced a TRICARE beneficiary to sign up to receive the compounded medications, the straw beneficiary’s information was sent to Choice MD, a Tennessee medical clinic co-owned and operated by Jimmy and Ashley Collins.

Doctors and medical professionals employed at Choice MD, including Dr. Susan Vergot, Dr. Carl Lindblad, and Candace Craven, then wrote prescriptions for the TRICARE beneficiaries, despite never conducting a medical review or examination of the patients in person.

Once signed by the doctors, these prescriptions were not given to the straw beneficiaries, but sent directly to The Medicine Shoppe, a pharmacy in Bountiful, Utah, which filled the prescriptions and received massive reimbursement from TRICARE.

The owners of The Medicine Shoppe then paid kickbacks to the Collinses based on a percentage of the TRICARE reimbursement paid for the prescriptions referred by the Collinses’ recruiter network. These kickback payments to the Collinses totaled at least $45.7 million dollars. The Collinses, in turn, paid kickbacks to the recruiters working as part of their network, including Adams, Castro, and Syto, among others.

In addition to guilty pleas from Adams, Castro, and Syto, both Dr. Vergot and Dr. Lindblad as well as Candace Craven, a nurse practitioner at Choice MD, have previously pleaded guilty for their roles in the conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. CFK, Inc., the corporate owner of the Medicine Shoppe, has also pleaded guilty and paid a fine as part of this investigation.