‘Avoiding Health Care Pitfalls’ Author Sentenced to 10 Years for $136M Medicare Fraud Scheme
A Georgia nurse practitioner who authored books on health care compliance while orchestrating a massive telemedicine fraud scheme was sentenced Monday to 120 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $66 million in restitution, federal prosecutors announced.
Jean Wilson, 54, of Richmond Hill, Georgia, owned and operated two telemedicine companies between 2017 and 2019. According to court documents, she and her co-conspirators paid illegal kickbacks to medical providers to sign orders for medically unnecessary orthotic braces and prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries—often signing many of the prescriptions herself.
“This defendant—a nurse practitioner responsible for the care and safety of her patients—exploited our health care system, conspiring to submit over $136 million in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Today’s lengthy sentence underscores the Fraud Division’s commitment to fighting fraud at every turn to restore public trust in our institutions.”
Wilson pleaded guilty in March 2024 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and health care fraud.
According to court documents, after acquiring signed orders and prescriptions, Wilson and others illegally sold them to purported marketing companies for approximately $90 per Medicare beneficiary. Those companies often re-sold the orders to brace companies and pharmacies, which then submitted claims for unnecessary equipment and drugs to Medicare.
Wilson and her co-conspirators pressured beneficiaries into accepting as many braces as possible. Evidence showed that practitioners working for Wilson signed orders for four or more orthotics per beneficiary for over 3,000 beneficiaries—and more than 40 beneficiaries received orders for ten or more orthotics.
To conceal her conduct, Wilson used shell accounts and nominee owners for her companies, including using a member of her church to open a bank account in one company’s name. During the conspiracy, Wilson and others submitted over $136 million in false and fraudulent claims, of which Medicare paid over $66 million. Wilson and her husband, Reinaldo Wilson—previously sentenced to 7 years for his involvement—used illicit proceeds to purchase luxury vehicles, including multiple Rolls-Royces.
In a striking irony, after her arrest and indictment, Wilson held herself out as a “Medical Professional Legal Consultant” and authored multiple books on health care compliance. In one book, “Avoiding Health Care Pitfalls,” Wilson warned: “Some entities and individuals will try to use you as a way to make them millions!”
‘Adderall for Sale, Safety Ignored’: Digital Health CEO Gets 6 Years for Flooding Market with 37 Million Pills in $90M Scheme
SAN FRANCISCO – The founder and former CEO of a digital mental health company was sentenced Monday to six years in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme that used her company’s technology platform to unlawfully distribute over 37 million pills of Adderall, defraud insurers of more than $12 million, and obstruct the federal investigation that followed, prosecutors announced.
Ruthia He, founder and former CEO of Done Global Inc., was also ordered to pay a $1 million fine. Her co-defendant, David Brody, Done’s former clinical president, was separately sentenced to two years in prison and a $1 million fine. Both were convicted in November 2025 on charges including conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He was additionally convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
“Ruthia He hid behind the cloak of medicine to deceive the public, defraud health care programs, and unlawfully deal highly addictive drugs to vulnerable patients,” said Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division. “Ruthia He’s business model cast aside medical necessity and patient care in favor of profit and greed. Today’s sentence is a clear warning to every digital health boardroom: if you build fraud or illegal drug distribution into your growth model, the Department of Justice will find you and bring you to justice.”
According to court documents and evidence at trial, He spent over $40 million on social media advertisements to deceive Americans into believing they had ADHD, falsely diagnosing patients, and distributing Adderall—including to patients who the company was warned were suffering from Adderall psychosis, bipolar, depression, and anxiety. The goal was to obtain a $1 billion valuation by fueling user growth through a subscription model where patients paid a monthly fee for automatically refilled prescriptions obtained through a “frictionless” technology platform.
U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian for the Northern District of California drew a stark comparison: “Drug traffickers are driven by profits, not people. Whether they operate from a street corner or from a computer, the motive and the resulting harm are the same. These defendants made a choice to operate a telehealth platform that ignored medical necessity and as a result put patients at risk.”
Evidence showed the defendants used “carrots and sticks” to corrupt medical decision-making on a national scale. They refused to hire or fired clinicians who did not participate in the conspiracy, while paying up to $60,000 per month to those who signed Adderall prescriptions every 30 seconds. Clinicians were pressured to diagnose ADHD in initial visits capped at half the length of a typical examination and to prescribe stimulants to patients who did not have ADHD or were at risk for serious side effects.
The company used an “auto-refill” feature that minimized follow-up appointments, with prescribers signing off based on automatically generated messages. Some patients went years without seeing clinicians, who continued authorizing refills even through involuntary psychiatric holds or after patients had died. Brody himself personally wrote prescriptions for 394,324 Schedule II stimulant pills to 6,559 Done members—complete strangers he never evaluated or even reviewed records for. He admitted it “only took him 30 seconds per refill” and told He his dream job was to make money “WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO SEE OR TALK TO THE PATIENT[s].”
Three mothers testified at trial about their desperate efforts to warn Done that it should not prescribe to their children, which Done ignored. Brody encouraged practitioners to disregard widely accepted DSM-V diagnostic criteria and described Adderall as “candy” that Done providers handed out “like Santa Claus.”
To ensure members continued paying subscription fees, He, Brody, and others submitted false prior authorization requests to insurers, claiming proper diagnostic protocols and falsely stating that non-stimulants had previously been tried without success. Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers paid in excess of approximately $12.3 million as a result.
When national pharmacy chains began blocking Done prescriptions due to safety concerns, He created a secondary entity, Mindful Mental Wellness, specifically to bypass pharmacy blocks. When facing scrutiny, she moved operations to China, instructed employees to use encrypted messaging apps with disappearing messages, and personally deleted incriminatory documents from company servers. In February 2023, agents intercepted He at the airport bound for a flight to Hong Kong; she surrendered her passport but later secretly obtained a Chinese travel document—a fact she concealed from the court, leading to her pretrial detention. She also set up a shell company and transferred millions of dollars to China.
DEA Administrator Terrance Cole stated: “The defendants used the convenience of telemedicine to facilitate the unlawful distribution of highly addictive stimulants, placing communities at risk and undermining legitimate patient care. Whether the scheme operates on a street corner or behind a computer screen, DEA and our partners will continue to pursue and bring to justice those who traffic in prescription drugs for criminal gain.”
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