Miami Herald (FL)
April 16, 2018 Health/Employee Benefits
April 16--Monty Grow was raised in the sleepy town of Inverness,
went to college up the road at the University of Florida and starred on an SEC
championship football team.
After a few years in the NFL, Grow would carve out a second
career in sales and attain the good life on Tampa Bay.
But his mistake -- a colossal one -- was setting up a marketing
company to recruit and refer members of the U.S. military and their families to
a South Florida pharmacy. Prosecutors say it fraudulently billed the federal
government tens of millions of dollars for unnecessary medical creams to treat
scars and pain.
On Monday, Grow, 46, was sentenced to 22 years in prison by a
federal judge with a long history of harshly punishing offenders of U.S.
government healthcare programs. Grow, whose lawyers were seeking one-third that
time, chose not to comment when U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno asked him
if he wanted to say anything before sentencing on his healthcare fraud
conviction in Miami.
Grow's defense team plans to appeal Moreno's sentencing.
While hammering Grow, the judge reminded the former football
star of the place where he committed his scheme to bilk about $20 million from
the TRICARE program for U.S. military members, veterans and their families.
"In the Southern District of Florida, we're No. 1 in fraud," Moreno
said, pointing out that the defendant showed no remorse for his crime.
In February, a Miami federal jury convicted Grow not only of a
healthcare-fraud conspiracy but also of conspiring to receive and pay kickbacks
to his sales team for referring hundreds of military beneficiaries to the
Pompano Beach-based pharmacy, Patient Care America. He was also found guilty of
money laundering. But Grow was also acquitted of numerous other related
charges.
The jury had to decide whether Grow intentionally defrauded the
government program or was simply paid lavish but legitimate sales commissions
by the pharmacy for referring the TRICARE patients through his independent
marketing company.
Grow's lawyers, Jeff Marcus and Daniel Rashbaum, urged the judge
to be reasonable in his sentencing, noting that eight other defendants in the
case -- including former University of Florida star and retired NFL quarterback
Shane Matthews -- received punishment ranging from probation to less than two
years. In the conspiracy to fleece the TRICARE program, Matthews, 47, was
sentenced to three months in prison for his bit role on Grow's marketing team,
lining up sales representatives who then landed TRICARE patients for the
pharmacy.
"This is money made from a sales commission, not stolen
from a bank," Marcus told the judge, urging him to be
"proportional" in his punishment of Grow, who received about $20
million from the Pompano Beach pharmacy for patient referrals.
Prosecutor Kevin Larsen urged Moreno to be tough on Grow.
"He knew the difference between right and wrong, good and bad,"
Larsen said. "The fact is, he had everything going for him. He had a great
career in the NFL ... but he got greedy."
Grow and his network of sales representatives referred about 700
patients to Patient Care America, which received $40 million from the
government program for supplying costly pain and scar creams along with wellness
vitamins between 2014 and 2015. For those referrals, PCA paid half of those
federal reimbursements to Grow under a contract agreement. With his cut of the
taxpayer funds, Grow kept $10 million for himself and paid out the rest in
kickbacks to his marketing associates who recruited TRICARE patients. The sales
representatives acted as independent contractors, akin to Avon or Mary Kay
reps.
Eventually, Grow himself went from being an independent
contractor to a full-time employee for Patient Care America, which factored
into his acquittals on numerous kickback charges.
At trial, prosecutors said many of the military members who were
referred by his marketing network to Patient Care America did not need the
costly compounds, which are specially mixed medications unlike typical
commercial drugs. Many only agreed to buy the compound medications because Grow
and his sales team paid kickbacks to the patients, who also referred other
family members to the pharmacy.
Prosecutors said Grow's team covered patients' expensive
co-payments for the creams and vitamins. One sales representative even paid her
stable of patients $1,000 each for filling out a customer survey after
receiving their medications from the pharmacy.
The 2016 indictment accusing Grow of conspiracy, fraud,
kickbacks and money laundering did not charge Patient Care America or any of
its top executives -- though prosecutors described them at trial as
"unindicted co-conspirators." The Justice Department has joined a
whistle-blower lawsuit filed against Patient Care and and a few of its senior
officers.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors portrayed Grow as a clever
salesman driven by greed who knew he was breaking the law while he pocketed
$13,500 for each of the patients that his marketing company referred to the
Broward County pharmacy. He owned a Tampa waterfront home, a Range Rover and a
Porsche 911 and has millions in an e-trade stock market account -- though all
of those assets have been seized by the feds.
Grow's defense attorneys, Rashbaum and Marcus, depicted the
former football player as a lawful, successful businessman whose NFL career as
a cornerback was cut short by injury in 1996 after playing for the Kansas City
Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars. They said he began a marketing career in the field
of compound pharmacies and later broke out on his own with a Tampa company
called MGTEN -- his initials and jersey number as a ballplayer.
The defense argued that Grow set up his network of sales
representatives to handle hundreds of TRICARE patients and arrange for them to
see doctors through "telemedicine" companies. Grow paid the
physicians for legitimate consultations, and they approved the vast majority of
prescriptions for the compound medications provided by Patient Care America.
The defense also said Grow paid his independent contractors
"commissions" -- not kickbacks -- for finding the TRICARE patients.
Grow stood trial alone because an associate with whom he shared
millions in kickbacks for the patient referrals pleaded guilty in early January
to a conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. Ginger Lay, who received about $6
million from Grow for her patient referrals, was initially sentenced to about
five years in prison but that was reduced to less than two years for her
testimony against Grow.
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