Port Chester Pharmacy Owner Admits To $600,000 Fraud

Attorney General Spitzer announced today that a Port Chester pharmacy owner has admitted to stealing more than $600,000 by fraudulently billing the Medicaid program and the Village of Port Chester for medications which were never dispensed.

John Postiglione and Postiglione Pharmacy Inc. appeared in Westchester County Court before Judge Gerald E. Loehr and each pleaded guilty to one count of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and one count of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree. Postiglione, 45, of 109 Pleasant Ridge Road, Harrison, is the owner of Postiglione Pharmacy, located at 147 Irving Avenue, Port Chester.

Sentencing has been set for October 14, 2005, by which time the defendants are required to have made civil and criminal restitution to the Medicaid program in the sum of $489,973 and criminal restitution to the Village of Port Chester in the sum of $263,711. John Postiglione faces up to five to fifteen years imprisonment at sentencing.

According to prosecutors, between January 1, 1997, and November 3, 2003, Postiglione submitted false reimbursement claims to the Medicaid program and, through its fiscal agent Caremark Rx Inc., to the Village of Port Chester, for expensive medications he claimed to have dispensed to Medicaid recipients and to retired Village employees. Among the drugs fraudulently billed were Epogen and Procrit.

In carrying out the scheme, Postiglione billed for medications which, it was learned during the course of the investigation, had not been prescribed either entirely or in the amounts identified by the medical providers who were listed by Postiglione on the claims he submitted. Also, as part of the investigation, an undercover investigator from the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control visited Postiglione’s pharmacy, posing as a Medicaid recipient, and presented Postiglione with prescriptions. Postiglione billed Medicaid for over $16,000 in medications he represented he had dispensed to the undercover investigator but in fact had not dispensed.

The case was prosecuted by Special Assistant Attorney General Thomas O’Hanlon of the Pearl River Regional Office of Attorney General Spitzer’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU). Assisting in the investigation was Special Investigator Frank Bluszcz and Senior Investigator Nancy Calo-Kenney, Supervising Special Auditor Investigator Jean Moss and Senior Special Auditor Investigator Sandra Alvarez.