Date: May 19, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov Jacksonville, FL — United States Attorney Roger B. Handberg announces that a federal jury has returned guilty verdicts on the indictment charging Mario Correa Jackson of Jacksonville, with illegally soliciting and receiving health care kickbacks as well as illegally offering and paying health care kickbacks. Jackson faces a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment on each of the charges. A sentencing date has not yet been set. According to the evidence presented at trial, Jackson received illegal health care kickbacks for recruiting individuals to sign up for prescription compound creams. While working in the linen department of the NAS JAX Hospital, Jackson specifically targeted members of the military to ensure that the military members' health insurance, TRICARE, would pay for the cost of the compound creams focusing on pain, scar, and migraine creams because they were the most lucrative for kickback purposes. The compound creams themselves cost TRICARE on average tens of thousands of dollars per cream. In addition to receiving kickbacks for receiving his own creams, Jackson also paid kickbacks to others once he had signed them up to get their creams and automatic refills, regardless of whether they actually needed the creams. Jackson was responsible for signing up at least 40 individuals, for whom he would receive an additional kickback for recruiting them as "patients." Once the individuals showed proof of obtaining their prescription cream, Jackson paid them their illegal kickbacks of several hundreds of dollars per cream they received. This case was investigated by the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys John Cannizzaro, Mai Tran, and Julie Hackenberry.
