A Riverside County woman pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge for fraudulently obtaining more than $500,000 in COVID-related unemployment benefits for herself.

Cara Marie Kirk-Connell, 32, of Menifee, pleaded guilty to a single-count information charging her with use of an unauthorized access device.

Kirk-Connell knowingly used approximately 50 unauthorized access devices. Specifically, she used stolen personal identifiable information, such as dates of birth and Social Security numbers, to apply for unemployment insurance benefits in the names of other people.

Based upon Kirk-Connell’s false and fraudulent applications, she obtained from the California Employment Development Department (EDD) multiple debit cards that contained more than $500,000 in COVID-related unemployment benefits to which she was not entitled, the plea agreement states.

Kirk-Connell admitted she knew people who access the “dark web” to purchase stolen identities that she used to then file fraudulent claims with EDD. She further admitted to watching YouTube videos that instructed viewers on how to commit EDD fraud.

When Murietta police arrested Kirk-Connell on September 11 during a traffic stop, she possessed eight EDD debit cards in other people’s names and, the day before her arrest, Kirk-Connell used fraudulently obtained EDD debit cards to withdraw more than $1,000 in cash. When federal law enforcement arrested Kirk-Connell on October 9, she possessed in her purse four EDD debit cards in victims’ names, four additional debit cards in victims’ names in her car trunk, and approximately $10,000 in cash, according to the plea agreement.

EDD records showed that the cards and identities that Kirk-Connell possessed had been used to apply for and authorize approximately $534,149 in COVID-related unemployment benefits from California’s EDD program, of which nearly $270,000 had already been spent, according to an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint in this case.

The California EDD distributes unemployment benefits under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, passed by Congress in March. The CARES Act expanded unemployment benefits to cover those who were previously ineligible, including business owners, self-employed workers, and independent contractors, who were put out of business or significantly reduced their services because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She is scheduled for an April 9, 2021 sentencing hearing, at which time Kirk-Connell will face a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

Residents of Los Angeles, California, and Henderson, Nevada, and 16 pharmacies scattered between California, Texas, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada, pled guilty to charges of healthcare fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and/or conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statutes.

Those pleading guilty included brothers Mehran David Kohanbash, and Joseph Kohan and their nephew, Nima Rodefshalom.

In addition guilty pleas included pharmacies Insure Nutrition, Inc., Affordable Pharmacy, Inc., ASC Pharmaceutical, LLC, DQD Enterprise Corporation, DTST Ventures, LLC, Econo Pharmacy, Inc., Emerson Pharmacy, Inc., Genorex Pharmaceutical, LLC, Nutrition Plus, Inc., Pharmatek Pharmacy, Inc., Premier Med Services, Inc., Rexford Pharmacy, Inc., Specialty Pharmacy Management of America, Inc., Solutech Pharmaceuticals, LLC, Village Drug & Compounding, Inc., and Vitamed LLC.

The three individual defendants together with the defendant pharmacies engaged in a series of interconnected actions that resulted in misleading advertising associated with supplying what were described to the Court as nutritional shakes.

The defendants secured the patients’ insurance information which in turn resulted in the defendants soliciting the patients to appeal to their respective physicians to prescribe what were described for the Court as High Yield (expensive) medications.

These medications were often compounded, meaning that one or more of the pharmacies mixed together preexisting medications or substances to provide a new or different product.

It was a part of the scheme(s) involved in the guilty pleas that the defendants conspired to promote these medications that often yielded extremely high profits, by manipulating the collection of co pays on various medications to make it appear that co pays were being collected when in fact they were not.

Sentencing is scheduled for April 7-8, 2020 for the individual defendants. Sentencing for the defendant pharmacies has not been scheduled.

For each individual defendant, the law provides for a maximum total sentence of 35 years in prison, a fine of $750,000, or both.

The three defendants and the 16 corporations agreed to forfeiture, restitution, fines and civil penalties amounting to more than $60,000,000.

Escondido pain clinic doctor, and board-certified physiatrist, Bradley Chesler, M.D., has paid the United States $153,000 to resolve allegations that he overprescribed opioids.

Dr. Chesler is listed as a Qualified Medical Evaluator by the DWC in the specialties of Pain Medicine and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. His QME office address is 1955 Citracado Pkwy, in Escondido.

This settlement stems from the investigation into whether Dr. Chesler illegally prescribed opioids to his patients in violation of the Controlled Substances Act.

Pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act, doctors may write prescriptions for opioids only for a legitimate medical purpose while acting in the usual course of their professional practice.

Federal investigators alleged that from January 1, 2014 to August 31, 2019, Dr. Chesler wrote opioid prescriptions that violated the Controlled Substances Act, which included prescriptions for fentanyl, hydromorphone, methadone, and oxycodone.

Dr. Chesler allegedly prescribed opioids while he concurrently prescribed benzodiazepines, and he prescribed to some patients a combination of at least one opioid, one benzodiazepine, and one muscle relaxant.

Drug abusers colloquially refer to the opioid, benzodiazepine, and muscle relaxant combination as the “Trinity” because of its rapid euphoric effects. These drug combinations are known to increase the risk of abuse, addiction, and overdose.

Chesler prescribed large quantities of opioids to his patients that reached high daily Morphine Milligram Equivalent (MME) levels (sometimes even exceeding 180 MME). The United States further alleged that Dr. Chesler failed to properly address aberrant urine drug test results when prescribing opioids.

Public health experts have long warned health care providers that overdose risk is elevated in patients receiving medically prescribed opioids, particularly those receiving high dosages. Among other things, tracking MMEs advances better practices for pain management by reinforcing the need for providers to consider alternatives to using high-dosage opioids to treat pain, and to appropriately justify decisions to use opioids at dosages that place patients at high risk of addiction, abuse, and overdose.

DEA Special Agent in Charge John Callery said, “Although 99 percent of medical professionals abide by DEA guidance and federal law, we will investigate those who put illicit profits before their oaths and bring them to justice.”

The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) is undertaking several activities to better understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Workers Compensation system. One action is monitoring several medical data-related metrics, which were developed to provide insight into the effect of COVID-19 on several aspects of the medical system as it relates to WC.

These metrics track quarterly results over time, allowing it to compare the data before the onset of the pandemic and workers compensation medical experience thereafter. Looking at the first two quarters of 2020, it identified general demographics and cost characteristics of claims having COVID-19 medical treatments.

In it’s recent article NCCI shares some of the aggregated-multi-state results for these metrics including data from the first and second quarter of 2020.

Some of the conclusions of the report show:

— Hospitalization and intensive care unit (ICU) treatment are key cost indicators of COVID-19 claims.
— Overall active claim volume decreased during 2Q20.
— Increased use of telemedicine in 2Q20, to varying degrees across states.
— Evaluation and management and physical medicine show a decrease in the utilization of in-person services in 2Q20.
— The share of claims with surgery has remained steady, but the decreased intensity of surgery procedures seems to reflect a change in injuries or surgery mix.
— Drug share of medical costs took an upward turn, in part driven by increased utilization of opioids.

While it is too early to fully assess the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the WC system, NCCI is beginning to identify the medical aspects of the system that are likely to be affected.

Furthermore, the measures of the potential indirect impact of the pandemic on medical services provided to all injured workers in the first two quarters of 2020, at first blush, do not show evidence of substantial disruption.

As data emerges, future updates to these metrics will be available on NCCI.com. A medical data dashboard will include state-specific results, allowing the user to compare a state’s experience to a multi-state benchmark.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) reports that the agency has been subject to a cyber attack and that some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed, BioNTech revealed in a statement published on its website.

The German biotechnology company, previously best-known for its work pioneering cancer immunotherapy research, stressed that “no BioNTech or Pfizer systems” were accessed during the breach, suggesting that it was the European Union regulator whose security failed.

They added that they were “unaware” of any of their study participants being identified as a result of the breach and that they are awaiting “further information about EMA’s investigation and will respond appropriately and in accordance with EU law.”

“Our focus remains steadfast on working in close partnership with governments and regulators to bring our COVID-19 vaccine to people around the globe as safely and as efficiently as possible to help bring an end to this devastating pandemic,” they concluded.

The British National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has indicated that the hack should not impact the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine’s rapid and at-times troubled rollout in the United Kingdom.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has advised that the coronavirus prophylactic should not be administered to people with a “history of a significant reaction” to medicines, foods, or vaccines, after two National Health Service (NHS) workers showed symptoms of an “anaphylactoid reaction” shortly after being injected.

The regulator now advised that “resuscitation facilities” should be present at all vaccination sites, and vaccinations not carried out if they are now available.

On the hacks, the NCSC said that it was “working with international partners to understand the impact of this incident affecting the EU’s medicine regulator, but there is currently no evidence to suggest that the UK’s medicine regulator has been affected.”

According to the BBC, it is “not clear” whether or not cyber-attackers also hacked the EMA’s documents on the Moderna vaccine at present.

China, Iran, and Russia have all been accused of using hackers against coronavirus vaccine research by Western governments.