Davis (un)Ethical Pharmacy

The former owner of Davis Ethical Pharmacy, William Davis, is under investigation after an audit by the New York State Comptroller’s Office found that he scammed the state out of $235,000.

According to the office of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Davis collected the money mainly through payments for false prescriptions that were filed to Medicaid and the New York State Health Insurance Program (NYSHIP).

“Davis Ethical Pharmacy and its farmer owner appear to have been anything but ethical, defrauding the NYSHIP and Medicaid programs of a significant amount of money,” DiNapoli said in a release. “Davis even went so far as falsifying prescriptions from a deceased physician. My office will continue to work with law enforcement to get this money back and make sure those that committed this blatant fraud are punished to the full extent of the law.”

The fraud was found when auditors from the comptroller’s office randomly sampled 840 of 59,538 claims that Davis Ethical Pharmacy made to Medicaid and NYSHIP, which totaled around $7 million.

The audit showed that Davis was overpaid $139,796 for 148 of 573 examined prescriptions that were filed to NYSHIP. The payments included $56,392 for 58 prescriptions where the recipients were not even patients of the supposed prescribing doctor.

Additionally, Davis Ethical was overpaid $94,460 for 169 of 267 examined prescriptions. In one case, the prescribing doctor was dead when the prescription was written.

Auditors found that the pharmacy processed many of the false claims outside of normal business hours and often lacked records verifying patients received the medication.

According to Shams Tarek, spokesman for Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, the DA’s office is working with the comptroller and the Department of Financial Services in an investigation of Davis Ethical Pharmacy. No charges have been brought against Davis yet.