A Meridian businessman pleaded to guilty to participating in a health care fraud conspiracy case on Wednesday.

In August, the Department of Justice charged Vernon Sanders, the owner of FastScripts, LLC, with conspiring with others to solicit and receive kickbacks and defraud the Medicare program of $3,381,484, according to a DOJ press release.

He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Nashville.

The DOJ says that Sanders owned a marketing company and was a patient broker, and he referred Medicare beneficiaries to laboratories in exchange for kickbacks and bribes.

He paid marketers to recruit Medicare beneficiaries to provide their genetic material in the form of genetic test kits, according to the press release and the indictment. The indictment alleged that Sanders provided the test kits, either directly or indirectly, to laboratories. The testing, called CGx testing, sequences people’s DNA to see if they have genetic mutations that may indicate a higher risk of developing some kinds of cancer.

Sanders also paid kickbacks to doctors for signed orders for the genetic tests, without regard to whether the patients medically needed the tests, according to the press release.

Additionally, he paid illegal kickbacks to telemedicine companies in exchange for orders signed by doctors for genetic tests the release said. 

Laboratories and other co-conspirators gave Sanders approximately $383,260 in illegal kickback payments from about June 2016 to January 2020, according to the DOJ. Because of Sanders’ participation in the conspiracy, Medicare paid laboratories about $3,381,434 in reimbursements that they were not entitled to receive.

Sanders will be sentenced on April 12, 2021. He will face up to five years in prison, a fine of no more than $250,000, forfeiture of the ill-gotten proceeds and restitution to Medicare, according to the press release.