Keith Ritson, Frank Alario, Health Care Fraud, New Jersey 2020

A New Jersey physician and pharmaceutical sales representative have been charged with defrauding the state’s health benefits programs out of more than $2.5 million in a health care fraud scheme.

CAMDEN, N.J. – Keith Ritson, 40, of Bayville, New Jersey, and Frank Alario, M.D., 63, of Delray Beach, Florida, are accused of submitting fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary prescriptions to New Jersey state health benefits programs and other insurers.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on an unspecified date, charges Ritson and Alario with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, as well as individual acts of health care fraud and wire fraud. Both men are also charged with a second conspiracy to wrongfully obtain and disclose patients’ individually identifiable health information.

Alario is additionally charged with making false statements in a health care matter, and Ritson faces additional charges of conspiring to commit money laundering and substantive counts of money laundering.

According to the indictment, Ritson and Alario recruited individuals to obtain very expensive and medically unnecessary compounded medications from a Louisiana pharmacy, Central Rexall Drugs Inc. These medications, which included pain, scar, antifungal, and libido creams, and vitamin combinations, were reimbursed by insurance providers in amounts in the thousands of dollars for a one-month supply.

The scheme caused the Pharmacy Benefits Administrator to pay over $2.5 million for the fraudulent prescriptions. Ritson and Alario earmarked established patients of Alario’s medical practices who had insurance that covered the expensive compound medications, and Alario prescribed the medications not for the patient’s need or request, but for the benefits he and Ritson stood to gain.

The cases are assigned to U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler in Camden. The indicted defendants are expected to make their initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann Marie Donio in Camden federal court via videoconference on September 10, 2020.