The Civil Guard dismantled a criminal organization that would have cheated the Canary Islands Health Service more than 2 million euros
It has arrested 7 people, including 3 doctors, 1 pharmacist and 2 businessmen of the island of Tenerife for the alleged crimes of fraud, forgery, against public health and membership of criminal organization
The Civil Guard, in collaboration with the Canary Islands Health Service (through the Office of Rational Drug Use) and within the framework of the HIGEA TF operation, has dismantled a criminal organization that in recent years would have cheated more than 2 million of euros to the Canary Islands Health Service.
It has arrested 7 people, including 3 doctors, 1 pharmacist and 2 businessmen of the island of Tenerife for the alleged crimes of fraud, forgery, against public health and membership of a criminal organization.
The operation began once the Canary Islands Health Service detected that since 2014 a pharmacy located in the urban area of Santa Cruz de Tenerife had been dispensing a group of high-cost drugs that were mostly prescribed by the same doctor. , who practiced his profession in the beginning in the Health Center of the town of Geneto and later in the Health Center of San Benito.
The sale of these drugs reached such extremely high figures that the investigated pharmacy was able to bill more doses than the ones that were billed by the other pharmacies in the Canary Islands as a whole.
Given this situation, agents of the Civil Guard, in collaboration with inspectors of the Office of Rational Use of Medicines, began an investigation to clarify the facts.
First, they focused on analyzing the electronic recipes used for dispensing the drugs that allowed them to locate the main core of the network, consisting of a family doctor, a pharmacist and an entrepreneur.
The family doctor issued massive electronic recipes in favor of pensioners or people entitled to the maximum subsidy that did not even belong to their quota of patients and, therefore, ignored the criminal activity and also, in most cases , the prescriptions prescribed had nothing to do with the ailments that they presented.
They also verified that the electronic prescriptions were dispensed in a single pharmacy in the downtown area of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and therefore very far from the Health Center where the aforementioned doctor worked, which indicated that there must necessarily be a criminal agreement between doctor and pharmacy.
After several months of investigation, the agents found out that in the plot there was also a businessman who exercised the function of liaison between both (doctor and pharmacist), this being the main promoter of the criminal activity investigated, in which they had the connivance of several employees of the aforementioned pharmacy.
After this and with the authorization of the Court of Instruction No. 5 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the medical consultation, the pharmacy investigated, as well as the addresses of the three investigated and a clothing store owned by the employer, where a large number of workers were intervened, were registered. amount of sanitary documentation and numerous computer material, which, once analyzed, has allowed to know in depth the operation and ramifications of the organization. For all these reasons, the agents detained the pharmacist, the doctor and the employer, who were brought to justice.
Modus operandi
The modus operandi was that the doctor used a set of patients that he located in the database of the Canary Health Service (to which he had access as a family doctor) and, simulating having kept a query in the computer system, generated a Electronic medical treatment plan, which was then printed and delivered to the employer so that he delivered it to the pharmacy, where the process of dispensing the prescribed drugs in each electronic prescription was initiated.
The benefit of the pharmacist was that although the drug was billed to the Canary Islands Health Service, the medication was not really dispatched and could sell it on numerous occasions, since the box always remained in the pharmacy store, obtaining the consequent subsidy to the pharmacy. that he was welcome.
Branches of the organization
The agents discovered the existence of other criminal branches of the organization, of smaller scale, that were carried out in the municipalities of Güímar and Adeje.
On the one hand, it was discovered that in the municipality of Güímar, a businesswoman from a residence of the elderly, currently closed, used a family doctor from the health center of that town to extend electronic prescriptions to the elderly hospitalized in the center. and that later they were presented in the same pharmacy of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Only a few prescription drugs were dispensed but all those listed in the prescriptions were billed, thus generating benefits for both the pharmacy and the aforementioned center.
Likewise, in a Health Center in Adeje, the agents detected the same modus operandi that in Güímar, electronic prescriptions were prescribed to various patients who were subsequently sent to the pharmacy in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Dispensing and administration of anabolic drugs clandestinely
In addition, throughout the investigation, it was also possible to deactivate another illicit activity, consisting of the dispensing and administration of anabolic drugs clandestinely in the pharmacy headquarters of Santa Cruz. Consumers consumers of these substances, made appointments by phone with the owner of the pharmacy and in his back, one of his employees or himself, injected them with the dose of anabolic.
As a final criminal act, the owner of the pharmacy was finalizing the sale of the same to a third person for an amount much higher than its actual price, using for such deception the monthly amounts that were billed to the Canary Islands Health Service and that had nothing what to do with the real sales amounts. The objective of the swindling businessman was none other than to achieve a sale at a price much higher than the real before a new system of control of sales of drugs came into operation that would prevent him from continuing with his fictitious billing.
It should be noted that, through the software company responsible for the maintenance of the computer system of the Canary Islands Health Service, it has been proven that only in the years 2017 and 2018 the amount cheated amounts to an approximate amount of 1,723,586 euros.
