Onkur Lal, Healthcare Fraud, Virginia 2021

Arlington Man Pleads Guilty to $3.5M Healthcare Fraud Conspiracy

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Onkur Lal, 29, an Arlington man, pleaded guilty yesterday to his role in a conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud that resulted in losses of over $3.5 million.

According to court documents, Lal worked in various roles at MedEx Pharmacy, MedEx Health Pharmacy, and Royal Care Pharmacy, which were all owned and operated by the same individual.

From around 2014 to around 2019, Lal conspired with the owner and others in a number of different fraudulent schemes to defraud healthcare benefit programs, including TRICARE, Medicare, Virginia Medicaid, and Maryland Medicaid.

Lal took part in a number of fraudulent schemes, including generating false prescriptions, billing health insurance companies for prescriptions that were never filled, and billing patients' healthcare benefit programs for numerous high-cost medications that he and his co-conspirators knew were not prescribed and/or never received.

Lal and his conspirators also submitted false invoices under the names of other pharmacies, in an attempt to circumvent audits. Further, Lal and another co-conspirator fraudulently posed as pharmacists by elevating their title and credentials within the pharmacy's prescription software system.

Lal and his co-conspirator then used these elevated titles to verify prescriptions, which they then submitted to healthcare benefit programs and pharmaceutical suppliers for payment.

Onkur Lal is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 21, 2021, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.

A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after taking into account the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/arlington-man-pleads-guilty-35m-healthcare-fraud-conspiracy