An Orange County man and his accomplices have been busted in a $270 million Medi-Cal fraud scheme, as officials continue to crack down on abuse of tax payer dollars in California.
Paul Richard Randall, 66, of Orange pleaded guilty to submitting the bogus claims to Medi-Cal over an 11 month span for pricey prescription drugs that contained generic ingredients that patients either didn’t need or never received, the Department of Justice announced on Monday.
Randall pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud committed while on release. He’s been in custody since June 2025.
The DOJ said Randall along with Kyrollos Mekail, 37, of Moreno Valley, and Patricia Anderson, 58, of West Hills, took advantage of Medi-Cal’s previous suspension of a prior authorization requirement that health care providers obtain before providing certain health care services or medications as a condition of reimbursement, per the press release.
“This defendant used a public health program as his personal piggy bank,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said.
“This guilty plea should send a message that this administration — consistent with the President’s war on fraud — will not turn a blind eye while criminals fleece taxpayers.”
Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said Randall was a “repeat fraudster who caused Medi-Cal, a program designed to help those in need, to be billed nearly $270 million for expensive and medically unnecessary medications.”
“He and his co-schemers stole over $178 million through false and fraudulent claims for these medications, lining their own pockets with public funds. The Criminal Division will aggressively prosecute those who defraud Medicaid and exploit taxpayer-funded benefit programs,” Duva said.
The DOJ said that Randall along with his co-schemers, through a business called Monte Vista Pharmacies, exploited Medi-Cal’s prior authorization suspension by billing Medi-Cal tens of millions of dollars per month for dispensing high-reimbursement, non-contracted, generic drugs through Monte Vista Pharmacy.
From May 2022 to April 2023, the pharmacy billed Medi-Cal more than $269 million and was paid more than $178 million for 19 expensive, non-contracted drugs containing low-cost, generic ingredients that were not medically necessary, not provided, or both, the release added.
The department said the three laundered the money they got through the illicit drugs through a third party to pay kickbacks to Anderson, to hide their scheme from detection.
“Schemes that bill Medicaid for costly drugs that patients never needed or received threaten the integrity of the program,” Acting Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Scott J. Lampert of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) said.
Mekail pleaded guilty in August 2024 to two counts of health care fraud and awaits sentencing. Anderson is charged with two counts of health care fraud.
Randall’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 3. He could face a maximum of 30 years in federal lockup.
