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- Two telehealth execs have been accused of running an illegal drug scheme.
- The DOJ says the executives raked in $100 million by doling out millions of phony prescriptions.
- And they didn't even back down when they found out some of their patients had overdosed, the DOJ alleges.
Two executives of a California-based telehealth company have been arrested and accused of running an illegal Adderall drug scheme to the tune of $100 million.
In a press release on Thursday, the Department of Justice announced the arrests of Ruthia He, the founder and CEO of Done Global Inc., and David Brody, the digital health company's clinical president, in California.
The DOJ alleges that the two executives committed health care fraud by remotely distributing Adderall and other stimulants to patients for no medical purpose and then submitting false claims for reimbursement of the drug.
Prosecutors accuse the pair of not backing down even after they learned Done members had overdosed and died.
"The individuals charged today allegedly disregarded the first rule of medical care—do no harm—in order to maximize profits, and there is no place for such fraud in our healthcare system," Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in the DOJ's press release.
Done Health and attorneys for He and Brody didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
The DOJ accuses the defendants of luring drug seekers to the subscription-based healthcare service through millions of dollars of deceptive social media advertisements.
They then encouraged doctors in their network to prescribe Adderall, even when the patient didn't qualify, helping them make $100 million in revenue from prescriptions of more than 40 million pills, prosecutors allege.
Prosecutors say He and Brody ordered that doctors keep initial patient consultations to under 30 minutes, then set up an auto-refill option to keep patients' prescriptions flowing without the need for follow-up appointments.
The defendants also discouraged doctors from continuously caring for patients by refusing to pay them for any medical visits beyond the initial consultation, prosecutors allege. Instead, He and Brody paid them for the number of prescriptions they doled out, according to the DOJ.
He and Brody, the DOJ alleges, kept the plan going after they were told that people had been posting social media explainers on how to use Done to get easy access to Adderall and other addictive drugs.
In addition to the drug conspiracy charges, He and Brody were also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Prosecutors allege the pair learned about a grand jury subpoena and "deleted documents and communications," spoke through encrypted messages, and didn't provide the subpoenaed documents to the grand jury.
This is the first time that anyone has been charged for operating an illegal drug distribution scheme through a telemedicine company, according to the DOJ.
Both He and Brody face up to 20 years in prison.