Orange County pharmacist sentenced to 70 months for kickback-driven compounded prescriptions billed to TRICARE and Amtrak's plan
Thu Van Le, 42, of Placentia, California, owned TC Medical Pharmacy in Corona. He pleaded guilty on July 12, 2021 to one count of health care fraud and was sentenced on October 4, 2021 to 70 months in federal prison. From March 2015 to December 2016 the pharmacy submitted more than $13 million in claims to TRICARE and to AmPlan, Amtrak's employee health plan, which paid $10,982,759 and $768,488. The court ordered restitution of those amounts. Prosecutors said Le paid "marketers" kickbacks of up to 50 percent of the TRICARE reimbursements.
- Year
- 2021
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $11.8 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Compounded prescription fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-11-03
The facts, as recorded
- Judge R. Gary Klausner sentenced Le on Monday, October 4, 2021, according to the Central District of California release.
- TC Medical Pharmacy submitted more than $13 million in total claims between March 2015 and December 2016. TRICARE paid $10,982,759 and AmPlan paid $768,488.
- Le paid so-called marketers kickbacks of up to 50 percent of the TRICARE reimbursements.
- Court documents say the marketers used beneficiaries' personal and insurance information to generate fraudulent prescriptions.
- The marketers solicited beneficiaries through misleading cold calls that promised free compounded medications; in some cases beneficiaries were not contacted at all and simply received expensive medications they had not ordered.
- TRICARE and AmPlan required that medications be medically necessary, that beneficiaries be examined by physicians and that the pharmacy collect co-payments. The prescriptions were supposed to be for unique patient needs but were instead formulated to maximize reimbursements and were prepared on an assembly-line basis.
- Investigators included the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, the Amtrak, OPM and Labor Department inspectors general, HHS and the California Department of Insurance.
Why this case matters
It is the clearest published statement of the kickback arithmetic. The government says the pharmacy handed up to half of what TRICARE paid to the people who found the patients, which is only possible when each claim is worth thousands of dollars.
The cold call and the unordered package
The release describes two routes to a prescription. In one, marketers phoned beneficiaries with misleading offers of free compounded medications. In the other, beneficiaries “were not contacted at all and simply received expensive medications that they did not order.” In both, according to court documents, the marketers used personal and insurance information to generate the prescriptions.
The rules the claims were supposed to meet
The release says Le agreed to follow TRICARE’s and AmPlan’s reimbursement rules, which required that medications be medically necessary, that beneficiaries be examined by physicians and that the pharmacy collect co-payments. It describes the prescriptions as “prepared on an assembly-line basis” rather than tailored to patient needs.
The caveat
Le pleaded guilty and has been sentenced, so this is a resolved criminal case, not an allegation. The loss figure on this page is the sum of what the two plans paid ($10,982,759 plus $768,488); the “more than $13 million” is the amount billed. The release says the marketers’ conduct was described in court documents; it does not name the marketers, and this page does not either. Whether the marketers were separately charged is not stated in the source.
Sources
- Pharmacist Sentenced to Nearly 6 Years in Prison for Multimillion-Dollar Compounded Medicine Scam that Defrauded Health Care Plans. Oversight.gov, republishing the U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California release. Accessed 2026-11-03. Supports: Le's age and home town, TC Medical Pharmacy in Corona, the July 12 plea, the 70-month sentence, the $13 million in claims and the amounts paid by TRICARE and AmPlan, the restitution, the kickbacks of up to 50 percent, the marketers' cold calls, the plan rules and the investigating agencies.