South Jersey man gets prison, ordered to pay $5.2M in restitution for drug fraud

CAMDEN — A Gloucester County man has been sentenced to more than four years in prison for his role in a drug prescription fraud.

Christopher Gualtieri, 51, of Franklinville also must pay $5.2 million in restitution, a federal judge ordered Tuesday.

Gualteri defrauded his employer's health insurance plan out of more than $4 million by submitting false claims for medically unnecessary compounded medications, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey.

The law enforcement agency said Gualtieri and others learned that their health insurance plan would pay reimbursement of to thousands of dollars per month for specialty drugs called compounded medication.

Compounded medication scheme: Two South Jersey doctors face consequences in drug fraud cases

The drugs are typically mixed by a pharmacist to meet a patient's needs.

Participants in the fraud submitted the unnecessary prescriptions to compounding pharmacies, which produced the medicines and billed a benefits administrator for the workers' health insurance plan, the statement said.

Gualtieri received a cut of the money paid to the compounding pharmacies, and paid cash to other fraud participants.

The telecommunications worker engaged in the fraud from January 2015 to March 2021, an indictment says.

It says the prescriptions were written by a physician identified only as Doctor 1.

He also prepared and caused the filling of fraudulent prescriptions for oxycodone for himself and a family member, the statement said.

Gualtieri previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit health care and mail fraud and to obtaining oxycodone through fraud, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement.

A charge of making false statements to federal investigators was dismissed as part of a plea agreement,

U.S. District Judge Christine P. O’Hearn sentenced Gualtieri to a 40-month term Tuesday in Camden federal court. He also is to serve three years on supervised release.

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: Jwalsh@cpsj.com.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: South Jersey man gets prison, ordered to pay $5.2M in restitution for drug fraud