A healthcare professional who worked with a Jacksonville nonprofit is facing a federal kickback accusation that prosecutors tied to thousands of bogus Medicare and Medicaid claims worth $24.2 million.
A criminal charge filed July 30 said Rashan Jammeelah Jones, an advanced practice registered nurse, received about $422,000 from an arrangement where she prescribed HIV medicines for people she “had never seen, spoken with, or performed any manner of evaluation” on.
APRNs can legally write prescriptions in Florida.
But the U.S. Justice Department’s health care fraud section has spent months looking into Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements paid to a now-closed pharmacy operated by a nonprofit, First Coast Community Development Inc., that included Jones among a list of contacts on its website.
The charge filed July 30 said FCCD made an agreement with a marketing company in late 2023 to market HIV “post-exposure prophylactic” or PEP medicines, which are supposed to be used immediately after HIV exposure to prevent infection with the virus that causes AIDS.
The charge said Jones wrote prescriptions and “FCCD filled the prescriptions, submitted claims to Medicare or Medicaid for the medications, and was reimbursed approximately $4,000 per month for each person for whom a claim was paid.”
The prescriptions were for people on information gathered by the marketing company, the charge said, but “the persons who were signed up by the marketers believed that they were agreeing only to receive a free cell phone and did not request or agree to receive HIV medications.”
A marketing company owner, Jonathan Gholston, pleaded guilty in March to a kickback charge from his agreement with FCCD.
The charge against Jones, formally called an information, said 20,316 “fraudulent claims” were filed between November 2023 and July 2025, with Medicare paying about $11.7 million and Medicaid $12.5 million in reimbursements.
Jones hasn’t been arraigned yet but a form with her signature was filed in Jacksonville’s federal court July 30 waiving her right to be formally indicted and accepting instead the information charge.
When Gholston pleaded guilty to breaking the same law in March, court documents said he could face up to five years behind bars, although federal law now appears to set the maximum sentence at 10 years. Jones didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment through a work email account.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Feds say nurse prescribed $24 million in HIV meds, never saw patients
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | USA TODAY Network
