ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
When the jury came back with a question after more than three hours of deliberating Tuesday, defense attorneys figured it meant their client, pharmacist Joseph Chopski, had been found guilty of fraud.
Do we have to walk through the crowd after the verdict is read? the jury asked. A contingent of family, friends and customers had filled half the federal courtroom since Friday in support of Chopski, who owns Wonder Drug in Stewartsville with his wife, Beatrice, a fellow pharmacist.
But when the clerk read the list of charges - 19 counts against both Chopski and the couple's corporation - they were all followed by "not guilty" verdicts. Beatrice Chopski wiped tears from her eyes, while her husband turned to spectators and beamed.
Joseph Chopski and the corporation were charged with defrauding Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medicaid by billing them for prescriptions that had never been filled. The government found 93 billings over a 21/2-year period that were not backed up by original prescriptions, patients' recollections or doctors' charts. The bills totaled $1,900.
The defense contended that Chopski was simply the subject of a vendetta by Trigon after he put up a sign outside the pharmacy that read, "We accept Blue Cross, but it sucks." He said he was angry over the way the insurer was treating independent pharmacists with whom it did business.
Trigon canceled its contract with Wonder Drug after an auditor said he found evidence of the "phantom billing," a move that cost the independent pharmacy 30 percent of its business, Chopski estimated. Patients with Trigon prescription cards that pick up most of the tab for their medicines must go elsewhere to qualify for the plan now.
The 49-year-old pharmacist said after the verdict Tuesday night that he plans to put up a new sign on the marquee now: "Everyone has their crosses to bear; ours is Blue."
"This was just a set-up," he said, as family and friends congratulated him after the seven-day trial in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
Trigon officials could not decide this week whether to let their investigators on the case speak to reporters, and the investigators left the courthouse immediately after the jury was dismissed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Peters, who prosecuted the case, said afterward that she believed the "evidence was overwhelming," but that the loss wouldn't change the way the U.S. Attorney's office handled such cases.
"Health-care fraud is a billion-dollar industry in the United States," she said. "We've got to prosecute the cases that seem warranted."
Trigon fraud investigators who once worked for the FBI used their connections and exaggerated claims to get federal agents interested in the case, Chopski's attorneys suggested.
"If you're stealing from somebody, are you going to put up a sign outside your business inviting scrutiny?" attorney Tom Blaylock asked in his opening statement. "You might was well put another line ... on it saying, 'Oh, by the way, come audit us.'''
Chopski's attorneys argued that the discrepant billings, during a period when Wonder Drug filled 134,000 prescriptions, were just errors made during hectic times or were computer mistakes. During testimony, Chopski said he couldn't explain the mistakes.
If the billings were the result of computer errors, it doesn't explain how the fictitious prescription numbers from those billings showed up written by hand onto the drugstore's signature log that customers must sign when they pick up an order.
And one customer who requested end-of-the-year statements of her prescriptions for tax purposes was handed an accurate list of the prescriptions she received. It did not include the nonexistent prescriptions that were logged onto the computer. Peters argued that this showed efforts by Chopski to cover up what she says was a "deliberate" scheme to defraud Trigon.
Although the defense argued that the erroneous billings were random mistakes, they all "consistently put money into Mr. Chopski's pockets," Peters said.
She said he was aggravated that Trigon wasn't paying him enough.
Chopski said he has a $3 million lawsuit pending against Trigon for "tortious interference of business," accusing it of cutting off his contract without doing a proper audit.
He testified that the case, which began when the pharmacy was raided by the FBI in June 1993, has cost him $150,000 in legal bills and that he had to sell a family farm.
"What it boils down to - I was planning to retire at 65," he said. "I'll probably have to work an extra 10 years to pay for this."
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB