BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — A Trussville man has been charged in a multimillion-dollar kickback and health care fraud case, U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona announced.

A federal grand jury on Thursday returned a five-count indictment against John Alan Robson, 40, on charges of health care fraud conspiracy, kickback conspiracy and kickbacks. The indictment stated Robson was a sales representative who marketed to doctors’ offices various health care products and services. He was paid fees for the prescriptions, durable medical equipment and electro-diagnostic testing.

Allegedly, from at least 2014 through 2018, Robson conspired with people to pay and receive kickbacks to induce medical providers to issue medically unnecessary prescriptions. He also ordered medically unnecessary goods and services, which were then billed to Medicare and other health issuers.

The indictment mentioned one of the services Robson ordered was electro-diagnostic testing from QBR, a Huntsville-based company. Robson received per-patient payments from QBR for inducing medical providers to order tests from QBR. The indictment alleges medical providers received payments from QBR. Those payments were disguised as hourly payments for the ordering physician’s time and staff’s time, but they were actually per-patient kickbacks.

The case against Robson is connected to several other cases that resulted in convictions within the past year. The maximum penalty for conspiracy to commit health care fraud is 10 years in prison. The maximum penalty for conspiracy to receive kickbacks is five years in prison, and each kickback count also carries up to 10 years.