For at least six years, a Sandy Springs man, his parents and other conspirators bilked government health care programs out of at least $75 million.
Now, he is going to federal prison for five years.
Brett Sabado operated a pharmaceutical company, NHS, and, with others, conspired to defraud the federal insurance program for military members, prosecutors alleged. In that scheme, the conspirators devised pain creams, scar creams and other compounded medications specifically to maximize profits. To get health care providers to prescribe the medications, they turned to “marketers” who would push them. The conspirators then got kickbacks from compounding pharmacies that filled the prescriptions.
In another scheme, durable medical equipment companies paid “marketers” to order arm, leg, neck, wrist and back braces for Medicare patients, often based solely on a short telephone conversation, regardless of medical need. Sabado then shipped the equipment through his company, Red Rock, and handled billing through another of his companies, Square One.
By 2018, federal agents were on to the schemes.
Last August, Sabado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud. Sabado, who is 34, was sentenced last week to five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay a $25,000.
“This sentence will hold Sabado accountable for the damage he caused to Medicare and every taxpayer in this country,” said Keri Farley, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta, in a news release from the Department of Justice.
Federal prosecutors had recommended less than the maximum sentence because Sabado had provided information that helped them prosecute other conspirators in the scheme — his parents, Charles Ronald Green Jr., 65, and Melinda Elizabeth Green, 61.
They pleaded guilty in federal court in California last year and are awaiting sentencing.
In a separate civil resolution handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, Sabado is to repay $950,000, based on “ability to pay.”
His parents will forfeit millions of dollars, a Porsche and other property seized by the government, court records show.
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