BEAUMONT, Texas — A prominent Southeast Texas doctor convicted on 12 counts of healthcare fraud has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison on Thursday.
Prosecutors say Dr. Gregory Rodonaia, of Port Neches, created more than 600 fake prescriptions costing taxpayers more than $6 million.
They say he used his patients’ insurance information to send prescriptions to a pharmacy in Houston.
In 2018, Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local law enforcement raided his family practice.
Rodonia was also instructed to pay nearly $196,000 dollars in restitution.
He was convicted by a jury on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2021 for 12 counts of health care fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, making a false statement and two counts of accepting kickbacks according to a Department of Justice news release. The trial lasted four days.
Rodonaia was practicing with Rodonaia Family Medicine and Aesthetics when he was part of the fraud scheme. Prosecutors said Rodonaia helped by issuing prescriptions for specially compounded scar creams with names, dates of birth and health insurance claims numbers of military health care program beneficiaries.
Prescriptions were to be forwarded directly to Memorial Compounding Pharmacy in Houston and were issued without consultation with the patient and without the patient's knowledge according to the news release.
The prescriptions were billed to the military health care program, for about $9,000 to $13,000 each.
Rodanaia issued over 600 prescriptions in the names of about 140 beneficiaries. Before the scheme could be detected, the program paid about $6.7 million in funds to the pharmacy.