{"id":456740,"date":"2025-12-19T01:29:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T01:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/456740\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T01:29:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T01:29:16","slug":"florida-man-admits-to-getting-kickbacks-from-n-j-pharmacy-in-telemarketing-prescription-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/456740\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida man admits to getting kickbacks from N.J. pharmacy in telemarketing prescription scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"2EMPAMI64JARHO7PJUEICCJNNE\">A Florida resident has admitted in federal court that he received more than $300,000 in kickbacks from a pharmacy in New Jersey in a telemarketing prescription scam. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"YHK5DEE2HFBIXFJGDGIKESLD6A\">Eric Van Vleet, 30, of Delray Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-nj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-nj\">U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office District of New Jersey<\/a> said in a statement on Thursday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"4LXG26OASBBWVM33A544SV4ABY\">From 2018 to 2019, Van Vleet operated Hype Med LLC, a company that generated expensive medically unnecessary prescriptions through an elaborate telemarketing scheme, authorities said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"4DAZR7YKF5GLXGTTEGDVIADBYU\">Van Vleet and the company identified Medicare beneficiaries to target for expensive drugs including migraine medications and creams for treatment of pain, scars and eczema, officials said. Hype Med then teamed up with telemedicine companies, which referred the beneficiaries for prescriptions, federal prosecutors said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"OHEHBAR3PZDM5AV67A2CBUAHWM\">Hype Med paid kickbacks to the telemedicine companies and the telemedicine companies paid kickbacks to doctors who approved the prescriptions, authorities said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"QCP2INW5V5AI3PVUVVQ3ULXHJU\">Van Vleet then directed the prescriptions to certain pharmacies that his company had kickback agreements with. After getting reimbursed by Medicare, the pharmacies, including Apogee Bio-Pharm LLC in Edison, paid a portion of the reimbursements to Hype Med as a kickback, according to federal prosecutors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"HQ6KWDRSN5EMPIC62YXN2TPVVE\">The scheme defrauded Medicare of $1,399,812.52 and Hype Med received a total of $343,683.69 in kickbacks from Apogee, officials said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"45BQONGP25CVJB6LW27MKAZK7A\">Apogee\u2019s former president, Elan Yaish, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute. The principals of Apogee \u2014 William Welwart, Ethan Welwart and Gary Kaczka \u2014 are charged with health care fraud and other crimes in a separate indictment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph article__paragraph--left\" id=\"Y4VJHU6LAVGJDLUW6G2FSA4TLE\">The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office did not provide a date for Van Vleet\u2019s sentencing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida resident has admitted in federal court that he received more than $300,000 in kickbacks from a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":456741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[13890,9243,10000,210,13891,1060,13892,13893,9452,13894,3535,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-456740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-bottle","9":"tag-color","10":"tag-drug","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-medical-science","13":"tag-medication","14":"tag-opiates","15":"tag-oxycontin","16":"tag-painkiller","17":"tag-percocet","18":"tag-prescription","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115743645151458749","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}