WASHINGTON, June 28 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday it has charged 601 people, including dozens of doctors as well as pharmacists, nurses and other medical personnel, in what Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the country's "largest hearth care fraud takedown."
Many of them were accused of unlawful prescribing and distributing addictive opioid painkillers.
The fraud not only resulted in more than 2 billion U.S. dollars in losses, but also was blamed in many cases for deepening the opioid crisis across the United States, said the department.
"Some of our most trusted medical professionals look at their patients, vulnerable people suffering from addiction, and they see dollar signs," Sessions told a joint news conference with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
In one case, a Texas pharmacy chain owner was accused of using false prescriptions to sell over 1 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to drug couriers.
"The perpetrators really are despicable and greedy people," Azar said.
Some other cases involved schemes to bill the government healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare as well as private insurers for medically unnecessary prescription drugs and compounded medications.
The latest charges broke the previous record, set in July, when more than 400 people were charged, local media reported.
About 460,000 patients covered by Medicare received high amounts of opioids in 2017 and 71,000 were at risk of misuse or overdose, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Over 42,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.