Filmmaker is accused of health care fraud
He was a rising independent filmmaker who cowrote the screenplay of a 2019 movie starring Nicolas Cage.
But Ivor Jallah’s Hollywood career — and his freedom — are now in jeopardy. His troubles began when he started selling “headache spray” as well as pain and scar creams through a number of his Texas pharmacies.
He allegedly billed insurance companies for the medications that were neither prescribed nor provided to any patients, according to a federal indictment from November 2020. Jallah’s former business partner, Shannon Turley, also is charged in the federal case with health care fraud.
She is the ex-wife of a former MTV reality show star who died in May 2017.
Together, the Collin County pair allegedly ripped off insurance companies with the fake prescriptions using a string of pharmacies they formed together beginning in January 2017 in Houston, North Texas and elsewhere in the state.
Prosecutors say they paid for patients’ personal information and used the proceeds of the fraud to buy real estate and luxury vehicles.
North Texas, one of the nation’s hot spots for health care fraud, has seen multiple schemes involving pain and scar creams, costing millions of dollars in fraudulent billings. Statewide, dozens of people have been charged in federal court. In most cases, kickbacks were paid for the creams. Medicare, workers’ compensation and other government insurance programs paid the tab.
When authorities discovered what was happening, the military’s health care system, Tricare, stopped paying for the creams in 2015. The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has said that each container of pain cream can contain up to 10 different drugs, such as powerful anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants. But studies show they aren’t necessarily effective in topical creams.
Jallah’s attorney, Ezekiel Tyson Jr., said he hasn’t yet had an opportunity to review in detail the government’s evidence in the case.
Turley was released after her arrest. Her attorney, Derek Staub, said the case is still in the early stages.
“We’re gathering documentation and moving forward to prepare a defense,” he said.
Staub also said his client had ended her business relationship with Jallah and left the industry prior to the federal investigation.
Turley, 43, was a pharmacy technician before her license expired in 2019, state records show. Jallah, 35, was at one point licensed as a pharmacy technician trainee.
Both have pleaded not guilty to the federal charges and are awaiting trial. A trial date has been set for June.
Jallah is currently in federal custody after a federal judge determined in July that he violated the conditions of his pretrial release by committing more crimes.
One of Jallah’s new projects, “Blood Orange Moon,” was filming in Dallas last year when the indictment was issued in the Northern District of Texas. Jallah is listed as the writer and director of the horror/comedy movie.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Dunn wrote in a court filing that none of the patients who were supposedly prescribed the medications had been seen by a doctor. The 16-count indictment includes charges of making false statements in health care matters.
Jallah and Turley also are accused of paying for patients’ personal information to use in submitting the fake prescriptions. In the indictment against Jallah and Turley, prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of a 2017 Bentley Bentayga, a 2012 Rolls Royce, a 2017 Ford Mustang and a lakefront lot in Kaufman County.
Dunn wrote about a year ago that the case was part of “an ongoing criminal investigation that is neither public nor known to all of the targets of the investigation.” That investigation has already spawned more criminal cases. At least five other people have been charged in separate indictments that have been unsealed.
Tanya Williams, Kerrico Carr and Chad Walls have already pleaded guilty in their case, which was filed last year, court records show. All three were accused of committing identity theft offenses for selling stolen patient information to be used in fraud, court records show.
Two others, Daniel Davila and Agustin Esquivel-Gomez, were charged last year for allegedly providing fraudulent invoices to Jallah as part of the scheme. Both men have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
Hollywood bound
Jallah was born and raised in Fort Worth, according to his online biographies. Most recently, he lived in an area of Dallas that’s in Collin County.
His LinkedIn account says he received a degree in video technology from North Lake College and a degree in motion picture production from KD College. The Internet Movie Database says he wrote his first screenplay while attending film school.
Jallah told D Magazine in a 2019 article that he got his script into the hands of a producer after he moved to Los Angeles. After some editing, it was eventually turned into a feature film, “Grand Isle,” starring Nicolas Cage in the lead role, according to IMDB.
The 2019 thriller also features Kelsey Grammer.
Jallah is also listed as the creator, director and writer of a 2018 comedy series called “Rich Africans” that’s streaming on Amazon Prime. The story is about two “rich Africans” who are trying to “find their way in America.”
One of his companies, Film Keyz Productions, says on an archived version of its website that its team includes “industry professionals with years of experience in directing feature film & TV productions, music production, script & song writing and post production editing.”
It says Jallah has produced and directed “short films, commercials, documentaries, music videos, TV shows and motion pictures.” Jallah, who also uses the name, Iver Jallah, has said his main passion is directing.
He told PaperCity in an August 2020 article that “Blood Orange Moon” would be his “showcase film,” over which he would have complete creative control.
But whether he will get time to finish that low-budget zombie movie is unclear.
A federal judge in April found that Jallah had violated the conditions of his pretrial release by “submitting false pharmacy claims for reimbursement and false invoices to a pharmacy benefit manager in response to a pharmacy claims audit,” court records show.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Miller said Jallah was responsible for Green Leaf Pharmacy in Allen submitting more than $46,000 worth of bogus claims. Three of the supposed beneficiaries of the medications told investigators they had never heard of the pharmacy nor the doctor who was listed as the prescriber, Miller said in a court filing.
“Nor had they requested the medications or suffered from the ailments for which such medicines would be prescribed,” Miller wrote.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford also found that Jallah made a “false written statement” in connection with an attempt in July to buy a handgun.
Jallah does not have a criminal history. But as a person under felony indictment, he is ineligible by law to purchase a firearm.
Jallah lied on a federal form while trying to purchase the handgun at Ray’s Sporting Goods in Dallas — while wearing a court-ordered GPS monitoring device, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Detzky said in a motion.
For that, Jallah was charged in a separate case with one count of making a false statement to purchase a firearm, court records show. He has also pleaded not guilty in that case.
New pharmacy
Turley, of Plano, was married briefly to Christopher “Big Black” Boykin, known as the bodyguard of former pro skater Rob Dyrdek in the MTV series “Rob and Big.”
Boykin starred alongside Dyrdek in the show, which aired over two seasons, from 2006 to 2008.
Turley and Boykin divorced in 2009, court records show. The couple had a child together, and she cared for him in North Texas when his health began deteriorating, according to published reports.
Turley told Entertainment Tonight that Boykin suffered from congenital heart failure and that doctors told him he likely needed a transplant. He died at age 45 in Plano in 2017.
It was around that time that the pharmacy scheme began, prosecutors say. And it continued after pharmacy benefit managers conducted an audit of a Houston pharmacy run by Jallah and Turley to verify the prescriptions it was handling, court records allege. The audit focused on whether Wallis Pharmacy had sufficient supplies of the medications it was selling, records say.
Jallah and Turley paid Davila and Esquivel-Gomez to create fake invoices to show that Wallis Pharmacy was buying enough creams and sprays to fill the prescriptions, the indictment says.
Court records included some of the emails allegedly sent as part of the scheme. In one, Turley allegedly wrote Jallah and Davila in July 2017 to say: “Here is the quantities of drugs we needed, dated anywhere between 3/29 to 6/29.”