A federal judge Thursday sentenced Andrew Hillman, a Dallas healthcare executive, to five and one-half years in prison for his role in two major kickback schemes.
Visiting U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary also ordered Hillman to pay $3 million in restitution.
The judge said the sentence would have been significantly steeper, except that Hillman has cooperated with federal prosecutors investigating kickback schemes involving the now-defunct Forest Park Medical Center and Nexthealth. He testified in the trial earlier this year against nine defendants in the Forest Park trial.
Last year, Hillman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pay and receive bribes in the Forest Park kickback scam and money laundering in the Nexthealth scheme.
According to court documents, Hillman admitted he and his business partner, Seymon Narosov, were paid $190,000 by Forest Park to refer patients to the facility or to surgeons with privileges there. The payments, he admitted, were funneled through a shell entity, Adelaide Business Solutions.
Hillman said he and Narosov submitted phony invoices to conceal the wrongdoing.
Court records show that Hillman admitted that he and others conspired to launder the proceeds of various healthcare fraud offenses related to their pharmacies, resulting in $450 million in fraudulent billings to government and private insurance programs. Among other fraudulent activities, the pharmacies paid illegal kickbacks to doctors and others to generate prescriptions, self-funded patient copays to dupe auditors, and misbranded drugs.