Sierra Madre pharmacist pleads guilty to Medicare fraud

SIERRA MADRE, Calif. - A Sierra Madre pharmacist pleaded guilty Wednesday to submitting fake Medicare claims for prescription drugs that were never given to patients.

Paul Mansour pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud Wednesday. Mansour was a pharmacist who worked at and co-owned Best Buy Drugs in Sierra Madre. 

According to court documents, would create fake patient profiles in the pharmacy's filing system, and used those to add phony prescriptions to their profiles, which duplicated prescriptions for real patients. He would then submit false claims for the drugs in the fake files, and billed Medicare for the fake prescriptions in the names of the real pharmacy patients.

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Between January 207 and June 2022, court documents allege, these fake prescriptions netted Mansour's pharmacy between $600,000 to more than $1 million in government payments.

After his guilty plea Wednesday, Mansour is expected to be sentenced on June 28, and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.