Keith Pullam

On September 19, 2013, Keith Pullam was sentenced to 5 years and 8 months in jail and ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution, joint and several, after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Pullam was indicted in September 2011 and was a fugitive until his capture.

According to court documents, Pullam was a runner for the clinic Lake Medical Group. Lake Medical functioned as a prescription mill that generated prescriptions for oxycontin that the clinic's purported patients did not need and submitted claims to Medicare and Medi-Cal for services that were medically unnecessary or were ordered by a doctor and not performed. Pullam often drove recruited Medicare beneficiaries to pharmacies in the greater Los Angeles area to obtain fraudulently prescribed oxycontin. These patients were previously recruited by Pullam's co-conspirators to receive unnecessary medical care, if any care at all, in exchange for cash kickbacks.

The recruited beneficiaries were routinely issued prescriptions for 90 pills of oxycontin. After the fraudulent prescriptions were issued, Pullam and others took the filled prescription medication and delivered it to co-conspirators, who then sold it on the streets for approximately $17 to $23 per pill. In addition, Medicare Part D and Medicare PDPs paid approximately $2.7 million for oxycontin prescribed by the clinic and its doctors.

Pullam was a fugitive until his capture and arrest in Los Angeles on May 3, 2012.