By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Walgreens Boots Alliance agreed to pay $106.8 million to settle charges it fraudulently billed the U.S. government for prescriptions that were never dispensed, the Department of Justice said on Friday.
The Justice Department said Walgreens violated the federal False Claims Act between 2009 and 2020 by submitting payment claims to Medicare, Medicaid and other healthcare programs for prescriptions it processed but which were never picked up.
Walgreens instead resold the same prescriptions to other patients without reversing the original payment claims, causing it to be paid twice and receive tens of millions of dollars for prescriptions it never provided, the department said.
The Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmacy chain did not admit liability in agreeing to settle. Walgreens did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.
Friday’s settlement resolves three whistleblower lawsuits filed in Florida, New Mexico and Texas.
The Justice Department said the payout takes into account Walgreens’ cooperation and its “significant” steps to upgrade its in-house pharmacy management system to ensure that the billing problems don’t happen again.
Walgreens previously refunded $66.3 million for the settled claims, and will be credited for this amount, the Justice Department said.
The chain recently operated about 8,600 stores in the United States, but said in June it plans to close a significant number of underperforming stores over the next few years.
Steven Turck, a former Walgreens pharmacy manager who filed the Texas case, will receive $14.92 million from the settlement. Andrew Bustos, a former Walgreens district pharmacy supervisor who filed the New Mexico case, will receive $1.62 million.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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