Pharmacist who left Canada amid a $7.7-million fraudulent claims lawsuit gets licence yanked

More than three years after he fled the country to avoid a $7-million lawsuit over bogus prescriptions—leaving behind a $2.75-million mansion and several luxury cars—an Ontario pharmacist has been stripped of his licence and ordered to pay close to $116,000 in fines and hearing costs. Sameh Sadek, who owned and operated the now-shuttered MD Health Pharmacy in Brampton, Ont., was tried and found guilty in absentia by the Ontario College of Pharmacists. According to Ontario court documents he left Canada in 2018 to live in Egypt, where he is from originally, and has transferred millions of dollars offshore. The assets he left behind were seized and assigned to a receiver for liquidation. The decision summary lists a number of offences, including Sadek’s failure to disclose criminal charges for assaulting a police officer and refusing to provide a breath sample, submitting claims for drugs that were not dispensed, failure to comply with rules for closing down a pharmacy, and failing to respond within a reasonable time to the college’s request for information relating to the closure of his pharmacy. Read: 32-month suspension: Pharmacy owner pays the price for more than $1 million in false claims But it was the claim submissions for undispensed drugs that landed Sadek and his wife Lillian Fam—also an Ontario pharmacist—in big trouble with the college and led to a worldwide freeze on their assets. According to documents filed in Ontario Superior Court by AstraZeneca, between June 2017 and March 2018, MD Health Pharmacy—co-owned by Sadek and Fam—submitted more than $7.7 millions’ worth of false claims under the pharmaceutical company’s “patient’s choice” program, which allows patients to purchase branded AstraZeneca drugs for roughly the same price as their generic equivalent. Pharmacists participating in this program submit claims to authorized third-party agencies for the drugs they dispense and AstraZeneca pays them the price differential between the branded drugs and the generic drugs. Initially, MD Health’s claims totalled about $8,000 a month but in June 2017 total claims added up to $100,000. The next month’s total was even higher, reaching $270,000. In August 2017 the pharmacy claimed close to $800,000. Between September and November 2017, the claims amounted to $3.7 million. Read: Licence yanked from Ontario pharmacist college says stole, submitted fraudulent claims and sexually abused a patient In granting the worldwide injunction to freeze the couple’s assets, the Ontario Superior Court justice noted “a very significant presence of duplicate claims, which refers to the defendant . . .submitting the same claim in respect of the same prescription to multiple sources for repayment . . . The number of duplicate claims involved is highly suggestive of a deliberate attempt to do so, rather than anything that might have been an inadvertent error.” This was not the first time that Sadek and Fam had faced charges of fraud. In 2016, the Ontario College of Pharmacists received a complaint from the province’s Health Ministry about false claims submitted by the couple to the Ontario Drug Benefit Program, from August 2014 to December 2015. That complaint suspensions and practice restrictions for both Sadek and Fam. While Sadek’s licence was revoked only recently, the college pointed out in an email to Pharmacy Practice+Business that he resigned as a registrant in February 2019. Fam continues to be listed as a registered Ontario pharmacist. The couple enjoyed a lavish lifestyle before AstraZeneca hit them with a lawsuit and had their bank accounts and other assets frozen. They had a $2.75 million mansion and a semi-detached house in Mississauga, just west of Toronto, as well as two houses in nearby Georgetown. Fam later tried to sell one of the Georgetown homes–which was still in construction–after their assets were put into receivership, but the receiver learned about the existence of the property just before the sale went through. According to court documents, Sadek had also put down payments of about US$700,000 on two pre-construction condominiums in Aruba. Through one of his Ontario corporations, he had also acquired master franchise rights in Egypt from a U.S. franchisor of specialty coffee shops. In its penalty decision against Sadek, the college ordered him to pay a $35,000 fine—payable to the province’s Minister of Finance—and $80,000 in investigation and hearing costs. When asked how the college plans to enforce these fines given that Sadek is no longer the country, a spokesperson replied that the college will continue "to do everything within its authority to enforce these orders in due course." Read: Pharmacist who hiked up prices for insurance claims gets $40K fine and six-month suspension

Pharmacist who left Canada amid a $7.7-million fraudulent claims lawsuit gets licence yanked

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