Florida leadership continues to crack down on the opioid crisis, and this time Attorney General Moody (R) is fighting abuse.
The Attorney General’s Office announced, along with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office that Adam Adler, a Dade County resident, has been arrested on multiple counts of patient brokering and felony money laundering.
Adler was involved in a business arrangement with SMA Labs, a Pennsylvania company, to receive urine from patients. After a urine analysis was performed, SMA would file insurance claims with the patients’ insurance companies. And, with every payment that was received from an insurance company, SMA would pay Adler a kickback that funneled through numerous shell corporations. Spanning over a two-year period, it began in February 2017 and continued through February 2019.
Speaking on the arrest, Attorney General Moody explained that “Florida has seen an increasing number of fraud causes in the substance abuse and recovery industry. It is appalling that anyone would take advantage of people trying to break the grip of addiction, especially amid this national opioid crisis that is claiming 17 lives a day in Florida.”
Moreover, AG Moody asserted that she is “putting these bad actors on notice” and that “anyone who abuses the recovery system for profit will be prosecuted and will regret it.”
Adler is facing nine counts of first-degree patient brokering, 16 counts of third-degree patient brokering, and he is also facing two counts of first-degree felony money laundering.
Rick Swearingen, the FDLE Commissioner, noted that “this criminal scheme took advantage of the plight of some of our most vulnerable residents, fraudulently capitalizing on their pain and hardship as they tried to get their lives back together.”
Praising everyone involved in the investigation, Swearingen added that “this arrest will serve as a warning to those who would seek to illegally manipulate Florida’s substance abuse and recovery system.”
