Former Bentleyville pharmacist waives his drug case to Washington Co. Court
BENTLEYVILLE – Customers were once lined up out the door of a Bentleyville pharmacy because they were that confident they could get phony prescriptions for powerful painkillers filled at the business, court records claim.
Some of them were even aware they would be overbilled for such drugs as oxycodone by Andrew F. Kuzy, who also is accused of bilking Medicare and health-care providers out of more than $300,000 under fraudulent claims, the state attorney general’s office alleges.
Kuzy, 61, who was arrested in the case Oct. 10, waived his charges Thursday to Washington County Court, avoiding a preliminary hearing before District Judge Curtis Thompson. He is free on $500,000 unsecured bond, charged with felony counts of illegally dispensing controlled substances, insurance fraud, medical assistance fraud and theft, and he is under a court order to surrender his passport to state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane’s office.
The case unraveled in February 2012 after state police Trooper Marty Gonglik pulled over a vehicle driven by Edward G. Zupancic, 50, of Scenery Hill, and discovered Zupancic possessed a dying amputee’s prescription for 360 oxycodone tablets that had just been filled at Kuzy’s Drug Store. Zupancic is serving a 5-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in November 2013 in Washington County Court to charges of illegally obtaining drugs and conspiracy in a case that led to a dozen other arrests.
Agents interviewed Kuzy’s employees and were told he “had been submitting fraudulent insurance claims for years for various medications and not actually filling, and, or, dispensing them,” the affidavit supporting the charges indicates.
“It was also related that Kuzy seldom refused to fill a narcotic prescription, even if it appeared to be questionable,” the court document alleges.
Kuzy, of 531 Warrick Drive in South Strabane Township, also owned Bentleyville Personal Care Home in the lower level of the building that also housed his pharmacy at 808 Main St., which investigators raided shortly after Zupancic’s arrest.
He is accused of supplying the majority of the personal care home’s residents with their medications, frequently submitting claims for their medications that were either discontinued or not prescribed by their physicians, authorities allege.
The agents also accuse him of devising an advanced billing scheme identified by an employee as “calendar billing,” in order for his business to obtain money it was not entitled to receive from insurance companies, the affidavit states. He would list as many as 50 prescription numbers for high-cost drugs on each day of a desk calender, billing for them in anticipation of their being filled, “even though they had not been filled, and, or dispensed,” the record alleges.
Some customers were able to identify prescriptions that were not prescribed to them, yet the drugs were billed to their insurance companies. One physician identified 92 fraudulent prescriptions bearing his name that were filled by two of his patients at the pharmacy, the affidavit indicates.
Authorities say Zupancic and another man split the pills they obtained through fraud, having received 5,370 oxycodone pills totalling 910 milligrams.
Zupancic told investigators “everyone in the area knew that Kuzy’s Drug Store was the place to go” to illegally obtain narcotics, that he paid as much as $3,000 each visit to the pharmacy, amounts that were double or triple what other pharmacies charged for the drugs. In all, Zupancic received 17,650 pills through faked prescriptions, investigators claim.
Two agents interviewed Kuzy on Aug. 15 and were told he struggled to “make ends meet” because of restrictions on payments from insurance companies, audits and “having to support not only his wife, but also his children and their families,” the court record states.
After realizing he could easily overbill customers for drugs, “one customer led to many more until there was a line out the door,” the agents allege in the complaint.
They also claim Kuzy confessed to the charges against him, and that he said he didn’t want “any more time or money spent on this investigation.”
Kuzy tried to shield his face from a reporter with a camera as he left Thompson’s office with his attorney, James W. Kraus of Pittsburgh. He offered no comment.