TEXAS CLINIC OWNER SENTENCED TO FEDERAL PRISON IN $49 MILLION HEALTH CARE KICKBACK SCHEME

HOUSTON — A Texas clinic owner who admitted participating in a health care kickback scheme tied to more than $49 million in federal workers’ compensation claims involving medically unnecessary compounded medications has been sentenced to federal prison and ordered to repay the federal program that absorbed the loss.

Henry Allen Gonzales, 53, of Willis, Texas, was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Charles Eskridge to 30 months in federal prison followed by one year of supervised release. The court also ordered Gonzales to pay more than $49 million in restitution to the Department of Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs. Gonzales pleaded guilty on June 30, 2022, to conspiring to pay and receive health care kickbacks.

The case involved a network built around Gonzales’ Houston-area medical operations and pharmacies dispensing high-cost compounded medications to federal workers covered through DOL-OWCP.

Gonzales owned and operated Option 1 Pain & Rehab Clinic, formerly known as Direct Medical Clinic. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, Gonzales received more than $2 million in kickbacks from Rayford ACP Pharmacy in exchange for directing prescriptions for expensive compounded medications to the pharmacy.

Gonzales admitted that the arrangement extended beyond pharmacy referrals.

Federal prosecutors said he paid marketers to recruit and refer DOL-OWCP claimants to his clinic and bribed doctors to sign prescriptions for compounded medications. Those prescriptions were then submitted through pharmacies for reimbursement from the federal workers’ compensation system.

After the Rayford ACP arrangement ended, Gonzales opened another pharmacy, Farmacia, and continued billing DOL-OWCP.

From 2015 through 2018, Rayford ACP Pharmacy and Farmacia received approximately $49,014,183.03 in DOL-OWCP claims tied to medically unnecessary compounded medications, according to DOJ.

The scale of the loss was specifically noted at sentencing. Judge Eskridge cited the significant financial loss to the federal workers’ compensation program before ordering Gonzales to pay more than $49 million in restitution.

The case also connects to a broader prosecution involving Rayford ACP Pharmacy.

Tronown Thomas, a licensed pharmacist who owned and operated Rayford ACP Pharmacy in Spring, Texas, was convicted on July 11, 2026, of conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks following a five-day federal trial.

The original federal case filed in 2022 identified Thomas as the owner of Rayford ACP Pharmacy and Gonzales as the owner of Direct Medical Clinic and Option 1 Pain & Rehab Clinic. Prosecutors alleged at the time that the network also involved physicians, pharmacists, patient recruiters, and pharmacy operations used to bill the Department of Labor’s Federal Employees’ Compensation Program.

Gonzales’ current sentencing is no longer an allegation. He pleaded guilty in 2022, and Judge Eskridge has now imposed a federal prison sentence, supervised release, and restitution.

The Southern District of Texas said Gonzales will be permitted to remain free on bond until voluntarily surrendering to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility that will be designated separately.

U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz described the scheme as an exploitation of injured federal workers and the government program designed to cover their medical care. DOJ said the prosecution forms part of a broader federal effort targeting fraud involving taxpayer-funded benefit programs.

The investigation involved the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, FBI Houston, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathryn Olson and Alexander Alum prosecuted the case.

The involvement of several inspectors general reflects the structure of the fraud itself. DOL-OWCP administers compensation benefits for federal employees who suffer work-related injuries or occupational illnesses, meaning fraudulent medical claims against the program draw directly from federal benefit funding.

The prosecution also falls within an expanded Justice Department fraud-enforcement structure created earlier this year.

On April 7, 2026, the Department of Justice announced the National Fraud Enforcement Division, giving the division responsibility for coordinating investigations and prosecutions involving fraud against taxpayer dollars and federally funded programs. DOJ said the division is also charged with developing national enforcement priorities and proposing reforms intended to close systematic vulnerabilities that permit fraud to occur.

The division is part of the Justice Department’s support for the federal Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, a government-wide initiative chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance and focused on fraud, waste, and abuse involving federal benefit programs.

Health care fraud remains one of the division’s major enforcement areas. DOJ reported in June that the federal Health Care Fraud Strike Force program, operating through nine strike forces across the country, had charged more than 6,200 defendants since March 2007 in cases involving more than $45 billion billed to federal health care programs and private insurers.

The Gonzales case illustrates how those losses can develop through coordinated relationships rather than a single false claim.

A clinic can control patient access. Marketers can generate referrals. Physicians can authorize prescriptions. Pharmacies can submit claims. Kickback payments can financially connect those operations.

When medically unnecessary products are placed inside that chain, the resulting claims can accumulate into millions of dollars before the scheme is disrupted.

In Gonzales’ case, prosecutors tied the operation to more than $49 million in DOL-OWCP claims during the 2015-to-2018 period.

The resulting sentence brings a major portion of the case to a close more than four years after Gonzales entered his guilty plea.

Gonzales now faces 30 months in federal custody, one year of federal supervision after his release, and a restitution obligation exceeding $49 million to the workers’ compensation program that funded the fraudulent claims.

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