A federal jury earlier this week convicted the founder and clinical president of a San Francisco-based digital health company in what prosecutors called one of the most brazen telehealth schemes ever discovered.
Jurors on Tuesday found Ruthia He, CEO of Done, and Dr. David Brody, the company’s clinical president, guilty of conspiring to distribute controlled substances and committing health care fraud. He was also convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice.
Both face up to 20 years in prison on the most serious charges when they are sentenced on Feb. 25, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in a statement Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors said He and Brody turned their Silicon Valley telehealth platform into a high-volume stimulant pipeline, one that dispensed more than 40 million pills of Adderall and other stimulants and made more than $100 million in illegal prescriptions.
“(They) built a business model based on addiction, deception and disregard for patient safety — flooding the market with controlled substances while defrauding federal health care programs. Their intentional disregard for patient safety and the law put lives at risk and eroded public trust in digital medicine,” said Deputy Inspector General Christian Schrank of the Department of Health and Human Services.
According to evidence presented at trial, He and Brody poured more than $40 million into social media ads that encouraged vulnerable people, including those struggling with pandemic isolation, to believe they had ADHD. They also paid for targeted search ads aimed specifically at people seeking Adderall without a legal prescription.
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