Thursday, April 13, 2023
LITTLE ROCK—An Arkansas doctor at the heart of a $12 million scheme to defraud TRICARE will spend the next 102 months in federal prison. Earlier today, United States District Judge Kristine G. Baker sentenced Joe David May, a.k.a. Jay May, 42, of Alexander, to 102 months’ imprisonment and ordered him to pay more than $4.63 million in restitution to TRICARE, the health insurer for our nation’s military.
A 2020 indictment charged May with twenty-two counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, violating the anti-kickback statute, lying to the FBI, falsifying records, and aggravated identity theft. After a six-day trial in June 2022, a jury convicted May on all twenty-two counts.
Proof at trial showed May stood at the center of a bogus prescription-drug assembly line and, later, went to great lengths in a failed bid to cover it up.
As part of the scheme, recruiters found military personnel and veterans with TRICARE and filled out prescriptions for compounded drugs in their names—selecting which drugs to supply (usually the most expensive) and how many refills to authorize. All that was missing were prescriber signatures. So, middlemen routed the pre-filled prescriptions to medical professionals, like May, to be rubber stamped without consulting the ‘patient’ or any regard for whether drugs were needed. TRICARE paid over $12 million for prescriptions generated in this scheme, part of a wave of fraudulent schemes around the country that saw TRICARE spend over $2 billion for compounded prescription drugs in 2015.
In exchange for thousands in cash kickbacks, May rubber stamped 226 prescriptions for which TRICARE paid over $4.63 million. All but one of his prescriptions were for ‘patients’ May did not know, never treated, and knew nothing about.