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TALLAHASSEE - Attorney General Charlie Crist today announced the arrest of a former pharmacy owner for defrauding the Florida Medicaid program out of almost a quarter-million dollars. Paul Magnum, now a Lake County resident, formerly owned a Miami pharmacy that billed thousands of dollars of prescriptions to Medicaid but never provided the prescriptions to patients.

An investigation begun in April 2004 by Crist’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit revealed that Magnum, 50, used his Pharmacy Depot to obtain reimbursements in the names of patients who were not customers of the pharmacy. Billing statements sent to the Medicaid program indicated that many of the prescription sales were made after business hours, indicating that fraudulent billing was occurring. Magnum used the more than $244,000 he obtained from Medicaid for personal expenses, including a 2004 Hummer.

"A pharmacy license is not a license to steal," said Crist. "Medicaid fraud will be prosecuted wherever and whenever we uncover it, to protect healthcare for the most needy."

Investigators interviewed six doctors whose names appeared on the pharmacy’s Medicaid billings. These doctors stated that they had never written the prescriptions in question, nor were the supposed recipients their patients. Additionally, recipients told investigators that they were not customers of Pharmacy Depot. The pharmacy was abandoned by Magnum in November 2004.

Magnum was arrested after appearing in a Miami-Dade courtroom on unrelated charges and is currently being held in the Miami-Dade County jail. He is charged with organized fraud and grand theft, both first-degree felonies. If convicted of all charges, he faces up to 60 years in prison and fines up to $20,000. The case will be prosecuted by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. The investigation was prompted by information from the Florida Department of Health.

A copy of Magnum’s arrest affidavit is available at: http://myfloridalegal.com/webfiles.nsf/WF/MRAY-6PAKAB/$file/Magnum_affidavit.pdf