A Parisian pharmacist was indicted and imprisoned in mid-December, suspected of having invoiced fictitious Covid-19 screening tests, for a damage of at least several million euros for health insurance.
This man was indicted on December 17 by a Parisian investigating judge for fraud and money laundering in an organized gang and for forgery and use of forgery, then was subsequently placed in pre-trial detention.
According to Le Canard enchaîné, which revealed the existence of this investigation, the investigations began after a doctor discovered that he had bought thousands of tests without his knowledge.
800,000 euros in cash
Between September and mid-December, the pharmacist would have on the one hand overvalued his declarations of tests carried out in his pharmacy and on the other hand would have inflated the number of test kits sold to doctors, to the detriment of the Primary Insurance Fund illness (CPAM).
The investigators found in early January 800,000 euros in cash in one of the pharmacies.
The CPAM, quoted in the newspaper, would have seized the Paris prosecutor’s office after “having noted fraudulent practices of invoicing to the Health Insurance of orders (of antigenic tests) not delivered” to doctors.
“Doctors told us they did not know the pharmacist,” says an investigator, saying that a second pharmacist had also been heard in police custody. “We still have to understand the mechanism of reimbursements by the CPAM. […] Carriers have been assigned. Orders (for tests) could be delivered, others not or to other people. »