Pharmacy Owner Sentenced for Health Care Fraud and Filing False Tax Returns

St. Louis, MO – Rehan A. Rana, 46, of Ellisville, MO, was sentenced on Friday, August 16, 2019 to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay a $100.000 fine, restitution in the amount of $751,787 to the Internal Revenue Service, and $526,285 to the Medicare Program. Rana appeared before U.S. District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig.

According to court documents, between 2009 and 2012, Rana and others associated with Allegiance Medical Services, a medical testing laboratory, paid illegal kickbacks to doctors and marketers in exchange for blood and urine specimens that they sent or referred to the lab. Allegiance Medical Services concealed the illegal kickbacks from Medicare and Medicaid, which would not paid for tests of specimens obtained by the payment of illegal kickbacks.

For the tax years 2013, 2014, and 2015, Rana, the owner of St. Louis Hills Pharmacy, filed false tax returns, indicating that he had taxable distributions from his pharmacy of only $300,000 in 2013, $150,000 in 2014, and $217,500 in 2015, when he actually had received $1,993,600 in 2013, $1,328,924 in 2014, and $1,253,372 in 2015.

“IRS Criminal Investigation is committed to investigating individuals who use their businesses as personal piggy banks,” said Steven Slazinik, Acting Special Agent in Charge of IRS Criminal Investigation.  “We all pay when others swindle the government.  Tax fraud of this magnitude and with this degree of trickery, dishonesty and deceit, deserves to be punished.”

The Internal Revenue Service – Office of Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Office of the Inspector General, the FBI, and the Missouri Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigated the case. Assistant United States Attorney Dorothy McMurtry handled the case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.