Top executives at the telehealth startup Done Global have been arrested and charged for allegedly peddling easy access to Adderall and other potentially addictive stimulants, in many cases when they weren’t medically necessary, the US Department of Justice said Thursday.
The federal agency accused Ruthia He, Done’s founder and CEO, and David Brody, its clinical president, of conspiring to push Adderall prescriptions to increase the company’s revenue, and of submitting false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement. The charges are the DOJ’s “first criminal drug distribution prosecutions related to telemedicine prescribing through a digital health company,” according to the agency’s release.
The company targeted drug seekers and spent “tens of millions of dollars on deceptive advertisements” to attract consumers, the DOJ alleged. The executives instructed prescribers to provide Adderall and other stimulants even when patients didn’t qualify, defrauded pharmacies and Medicare, Medicaid and other insurers, and made false claims about Done’s policies to get pharmacies to fill its prescriptions, authorities alleged.
Done allegedly arranged for the prescription of more than 40 million pills of Adderall and other stimulants and made more than $100 million in revenue, according to the DOJ.
“These defendants exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to develop and carry out a $100 million scheme to defraud taxpayers and provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants for no legitimate medical purpose,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the news release.
Done was among the several telehealth startups that grew during the Covid-19 pandemic by capitalizing on more flexible regulation that allowed for online prescriptions of controlled substances without clinicians having to see patients in person.
In April, the federal government said it had settled claims against Cerebral, another startup that prescribed controlled substances online, after alleging the company had disclosed its customers’ personal health information to third parties and made it hard to cancel its services.