(Sioux City)– A former Spencer pharmacist has pled guilty in federal court to charges he defrauded Medicaid and his own healthcare provider.
57-year-old David Easton, who formerly owned and operated the Medicap Pharmacy in Spencer, entered the plea to two counts of healthcare fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of aggravated identity theft.
At his plea hearing today (Fri.), Easton admitted that, from about 2003 to 2006 he defrauded Medicaid and Coventry Health Care of more than 200-thousand dollars by submitting false claims for prescriptions.
According to court documents, Easton used the identities and ID numbers of Medicaid patients when he submitted false prescription claims to the medical insurance program.
The documents go on to say that Easton used some of the proceeds in the schemes, including a check made out in the amount of 44-thousand dollars for a new Cadillac Escalade.
Easton is free on bond pending sentencing which will be scheduled once a pre-sentence report is completed. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment on each of the fraud and money laundering counts and a mandatory sentence of two years’ imprisonment on the identity theft count, to be served consecutively to any prison sentence imposed on the other counts.
