Sierra Madre pharmacist pleads guilty in Medicare fraud scheme

By Staff

The city of Los Angeles has filed a lawsuit against a journalist and watchdog group, hoping to recover photos of officers mistakenly released last year, including some who work undercover.

The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit names as defendants journalist Ben Camacho of Knock LA and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. The suit states the defendants received the photos, names and work locations of 9,000 officers through a public record request.

The city mistakenly included information regarding officers working undercover assignments.

“Defendants Ben Camacho, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and (unidentified others) are willfully exposing to the public the identities of Los Angeles Police Department officers in undercover assignments on the website Watch the Watchers, despite knowing that they are not entitled to possess this information,” the lawsuit brought Wednesday states. “The city seeks the return of these inadvertently produced photos to protect the lives and work of these undercover officers.”

Following the photos’ release, the officers’ information appeared on a website named “Killer Cops,” which offered a bounty to anyone that killed an officer.

“This is a new low,” Stop LAPD Spying stated on Twitter on Wednesday. “The city is suing community groups and journalists for publishing public records.”

Also on Wednesday, Camacho said on Twitter that “Public records are for the public.”

On Tuesday, undercover officers filed claims against the city and the department over the photos’ release.

ASierra Madre-based pharmacist pleaded guilty Wednesday to submitting fraudulent claims to Medicare for prescription drugs that were never dispensed to patients. Paul Mansour, 55, was a pharmacist and co-owner at Mansour Partners Inc., doing business as Best Buy Drugs, according to court documents. Mansour made phony patient profiles in the company’s digital filing system and created fraudulent prescription drug entries to these fictitious patient files, which duplicated prescriptions for medications that were provided to actual patients of the pharmacy.

“Mansour then submitted false and fraudulent claims for the drugs added in the fictitious patient files that had never been dispensed, billing Medicare for the fraudulent prescriptions in the names of real patients of the pharmacy,” according to prosecutors. “Between January 2017 and June 2022, Mansour caused Medicare to pay the pharmacy between approximately $600,000 and over $1 million as a result of the submission of false and fraudulent claims.”

Mansour pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 28, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The FBI Los Angeles Field Office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General investigated the case before turning it over to federal prosecutors.

“The Fraud Section leads the Criminal Division’s efforts to combat health care fraud through the Health Care Fraud Strike Force Program,” according to the Justice Department. “Since March 2007, this program, comprised of 15 strike forces operating in 25 federal districts, has charged more than 5,000 defendants who collectively have billed federal health care programs and private insurers more than $24 billion. In addition, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, are taking steps to hold providers accountable for their involvement in health care fraud schemes.”

More information can be found at https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/health-carefraud-unit.