An orthopedic surgeon was sentenced to 102 months in prison and ordered to pay over $13 million in restitution for his role in a $145 million scheme to defraud the Department of Labor through the submission of fraudulent claims for prescription compound creams. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Dr. Michael Taba, 61, of McKinney, Texas, accepted bribes paid by pharmacy owners to prescribe medically unnecessary compound creams to injured federal workers. Taba’s co-defendants owned and operated three pharmacies located in Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas. Over the course of the scheme, the pharmacy owners paid Taba and other doctors millions in illegal bribes and kickbacks.
Evidence at trial showed these compounds were mixed in the back rooms of the pharmacies by untrained teenagers at a cost to Taba’s co-defendants of around $15 per prescription and then billed the DOL-OWCP for as much as $16,000 per prescription. Patients who received the creams testified at trial to the creams’ ineffectiveness and, in some instances, that using the creams resulted in painful, irritating skin rashes. Between May 2014 and March 2017, the pharmacies billed the DOL-OWCP and Blue Cross Blue Shield more than $145 million and were paid more than $90 million for unnecessary prescriptions referred by Taba and other medical providers.