Audit: State overpaid Long Beach pharmacy

ALBANY - The state overpaid Kings Pharmacy of Long Beach by $715,000 for phony prescriptions during a roughly 18-month period, according to an audit released Wednesday in connection with a long-running health-care scandal.

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli conducted the audit to quantify the state's losses in the scandal involving Jay Kirshner, the former owner of the pharmacy. Earlier this month, Kirshner pleaded guilty to health care fraud and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution.

DiNapoli's report found that the New York State Health Insurance Program paid the pharmacy for cancer treatment prescriptions physicians denied ever preparing and that many of the signatures on prescriptions were forged. The audit covered prescriptions paid between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 9, 2009.

"In this case, because of just one pharmacy's greed," DiNapoli said, "patients and taxpayers got their pockets picked to the tune of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. It's an outrage."