ENGLISHTOWN, NJ — A New Jersey man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for conspiring to buy nearly $50 million worth of oncology and ophthalmology medications under false pretenses and then reselling the medications for profit, U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said.
Frank Incognito, 46, of Englishtown, previously pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton to an information charging him with conspiring to unlawfully resell various medications (including oncology and ophthalmology medications) that previously had been purchased by a healthcare entity.
These medications had been purchased through the medical licenses and offices of various doctors, with the express representation and on the condition that the medications would be used to treat the doctors' own patients.
In actuality, these medications were not used to treat the doctors' patients; instead, they were resold by Incognito and/or his co-conspirators for profit, Frazer said.
According to documents filed in the case, Incognito worked as an operations manager of a wholesale drug distributor for several years, operating under the New Jersey corporations of VRC Medical Services and Investigational Drug Delivery (VRC/IDD) in Sewaren.
Incognito conspired with others at VRC/IDD, as well as multiple doctors, to obtain expensive prescription medications that he and his co-conspirators otherwise would not be able to obtain on their own, Frazer said.
These medications were "straw-purchased" (when someone buys something on behalf of a person who is not legally allowed to buy it) through the doctors' medical practices.
From there, Frazer said Incognito and his co-conspirators illegally transferred and resold the medications.
Primarily, these medications were cold-chain biologic infusion medications, which are typically used to treat cancers, macular degeneration, and autoimmune diseases.
In purchasing the drugs, Incognito and his coconspirators made numerous false and misleading representations to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and authorized distributors, Frazer said.
These representations included that the doctors were purchasing the drugs to treat their own patients, and that the drugs would not be resold or redistributed to others.
In actuality, none of the drugs were administered to any of the doctors' own patients but were ultimately sold to customers of the VRC/IDD businesses for a profit.
The scheme ran from June 2012 through January 2019. During this time, Incognito conspired with others to buy and sell more than $47.7 million worth of prescription drugs, Frazer said.
Incognito is the third defendant who has been sentenced in connection with the scheme, in addition to doctors Anise Kachadourian and Joel Lerner.
Frazer credited special agents of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations New York Field Office, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Fernando McMillan, and special agents of the U.S. Attorney's Office, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Matthew Maltese, with the investigation leading to Incognito's guilty plea.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph McFarlane and Sara Aliabadi of the U.S Attorney's Office in Camden.
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