A 37-year-old Hattiesburg nurse was sentenced Wednesday to serve 18 months in federal prison for mail fraud in connection with a widespread compounding pharmacy scheme.
Fallon Deneem Page was also sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay a monetary judgment of $9,500.
U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Michelle Sutphin of Mississippi, and Special Agent in Charge Cyndy Bruce of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s Southeast Field Office announced the sentencing.
In August 2014, Page agreed to be paid $100 per referral of individuals she could locate with health insurance benefits to Medical Solutions of Ocean Springs, a business owned by co-defendant Dr. Shahjahan Sultan. Once referred, Medical Solutions and a pharmacy located in Ocean Springs would determine whether the individual’s health insurance covered the cost of the expensive compounded medications prescribed by Sultan and dispensed by the pharmacy.
If covered, Page and other nurses would perform cursory medical examinations of the insured individuals in public places, such as parking lots or gas stations, and on occasions Page would falsify some of the patient assessment responses. Sultan would then prescribe the expensive compounded medications.
At least once, on Oct. 23, 2014, Page knew Sultan had not performed any medical assessment of an individual and merely prescribed the compounded medications; the pharmacy sent the compounded prescription via Federal Express to the individual. For prescribing the high adjudicating compound medication, Sultan was paid 35 percent by the pharmacy of what they made per prescription. Page knew Sultan had not determined any medical necessity before prescribing the expensive compounded medication. In total, the individual’s insurance company paid $34,047 to the pharmacy.
On June 16, 2020, Sultan was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay restitution of $4,102,634.65 to Express Scripts for the Tricare claims, $582,280.79 to CVS Caremark and $115,611.03 to Catamaran. A money judgment of more than $2.3 million was also ordered.
The case was investigated by the FBI and DCIS. Assistant Chief Dustin M. Davis and Trial Attorney Sara E. Porter of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathlyn R. Van Buskirk of the Southern District of Mississippi prosecuted the case.