KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The owners of a Knoxville pharmacy that was raided by the FBI in April now face accusations that over around six years, they racked up more than $8.7 million in health care fraud.
An indictment said from August 2018 to July 2024, Tiffany Haney and Anne Warren with Rocky Hill Pharmacy defrauded health care insurance programs. It accused them of submitting forged prescriptions to Medicare and Medicaid programs for reimbursement. It also accused them of submitting fake prescriptions to private health insurance companies.
The indictment also said "other persons and entities known and unknown to the grand jury" could have worked with them on the scheme.
It said Haney and Warren would forge prescriptions using the names of medical providers and listed themselves and their family members as patients.
Haney is accused of falsely filling a muscle relaxer prescription for her husband on Jan. 23, 2019, and then filing insurance claims from the bogus prescription. The indictment said the pharmacy billed insurance $1,802 per claim and received around $1,232 for each claim.
A similar scheme began in February 2020 when Haney allegedly filed a prescription for Warren's husband.
It also said they created a drug formulary that included steroids and creams like lidocaine and fluocinonide. Prosecutors said they chose those drugs because of their high reimbursement rates from health care benefit programs. Two people would then market the formulary to pain clinics and health care providers.
The indictment said Haney and Warren would then alter legitimately signed formularies by checking boxes next to unprescribed medications and writing refills that hadn't been prescribed. They're also accused of handwriting a patient's name at the top of formularies, marking boxes for medications and falsely signing providers' names.
"In some cases, Tiffany Haney and Anne Warren included a notation falsely implying that a forged prescription was phoned in to the pharmacy and/or verbally authorized by a provider's representative," the indictment said.
Warren and Haney are facing charges of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, making false statements relating to healthcare matters and aggravated identity theft. Both are expected to appear in court on Nov. 12 for a hearing.