A pharmaceuticals marketer who was paid millions by two Fort Worth pharmacies did nothing wrong, and the federal government’s bribery and kickback case against him is a “house of cards,” “smoke and mirrors” and a “sham,” his lawyer said Tuesday.
“If telling a doctor that a pharmacy is doing a good job is illegal, then marketing is illegal,” Chris Knox, the lead defense attorney for Quintan Cockerell, told jurors in his closing argument in Cockerell’s criminal trial before U.S. District Judge Karen Gren Scholer.
Baloney, federal prosecutors said.
Jacqueline Zee DerOvanesian, a Justice Department attorney from Miramar, Florida, told the jury Cockerell was knee-deep in a conspiracy to defraud the government by inducing doctors to send prescriptions for medications, many of them needless, to Xpress Compounding in exchange for a cut of the take. Cockerell, according to testimony in his seven-day trial, also profited from prescriptions sent to Rxpress Pharmacy, a related business with overlapping ownership to that of Xpress Compounding.
After closing arguments, the jury began deliberating on Tuesday afternoon, and, not reaching a verdict, will continue their deliberations on Wednesday. Cockerell’s trial began on Oct. 11.
Both Xpress Compounding and Rxpress Pharmacy specialized in formulating “compounded medicines,” custom-mixed and often exceedingly expensive prescription drugs for patients who, for one reason or another, cannot take mass-produced pharmaceuticals.
DerOvanesian said the bribery and kickback scheme resulted in the government’s healthcare insurance program for American military personnel and their families, TRICARE, being bilked out of roughly $60 million in taxpayers’ money, dollars that were “intended to provide real medical care to members of the United States military.”
“Quintan Cockerell wholeheartedly joined in this conspiracy,” she said.
One government witness was Cockerell’s ex-wife, Kristin Najarian, who testified that Cockerell arranged to have her listed as a phantom employee of Xpress Compounding, which paid her more than $2.4 million for work she never did.
“I wasn’t working there,” she testified, adding, “I never did any work to earn that money.”
Knox, the defense attorney, said the only thing Cockerell did for Xpress Compounding was meet with doctors, many of whom he knew previously from his years as a medical supplies marketer, and tell them the pharmacy was producing quality medications.
“That’s called marketing,” he said.
Prosecutor Kate Payerle, a Justice Department attorney from Washington, D.C., told the jury Cockerell knew he was being paid kickbacks to bring in doctors who would send their prescriptions to Xpress Compounding and Rxpress Pharmacy, and that he was among the conspirators who wined and dined the doctors and offered them financial incentives to keep their business.
“He understood they were doing it the wrong way, and they decided not to do it the right way,” she said.
Many of the witnesses against Cockerell were executives or associates of the pharmacies who were testifying under plea agreements with the government.
Cockerell’s trial is the second to result from a federal investigation into billings by the Fort Worth pharmacies. In July, a different jury in Judge Scholer’s court convicted Richard Hall, a co-owner of Xpress Compounding and Rxpress Pharmacy, of four counts of paying kickbacks and one count of conspiracy to launder money. Hall is awaiting sentencing.