A female pharmacist surnamed Xu instructed her employees to use prescription slips as gift certificates and fraudulently obtained more than 56.22 million yuan in health insurance.

A female pharmacist surnamed Xu opened four pharmacies in Kaohsiung. She instructed pharmacy employees to use patients' prescriptions as "gift certificates." Patients could exchange the prescriptions for other drugs or goods at the pharmacy without taking the prescriptions. She was involved in defrauding health insurance of NT$56.22 million over the past 10 years. She was found guilty in both criminal and civil parts.

In the criminal part, Xu was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud in the first instance. However, because she was over 70 years old, the judge sentenced her to a five-year suspended sentence. The prosecutor refused to accept the appeal. The second-instance judge believed that Xu had fraudulently obtained health insurance premiums of more than 56.22 million yuan, but the National Health Insurance Administration had charged the amount. Medical expenses of 22.93 million yuan were sold. Although more than 30 million yuan has not yet been processed, the property of Xu's wife and her family has been seized as security. The sentence was commuted to 1 year in prison and she was also given a probation of 5 years. The case is still being heard by the Supreme Court.

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One of the pharmacies, which was headed by a pharmacist surnamed Tian, reached a settlement with the National Health Insurance Administration after the incident, and the prosecutors concluded the investigation and suspended prosecution. The National Health Insurance Administration also proposed compensation for civil infringement. The Kaohsiung High Court’s second-instance judgment found that Mrs. Xu and several pharmacists and others constituted joint infringement. The first-instance judgment was upheld and joint and several damages of 39.47 million yuan were awarded.

The verdict pointed out that pharmacist surnamed Xu opened four pharmacies in Kaohsiung. He and her husband surnamed Hong were pharmacists, and they were the persons in charge of two pharmacies, while the other two pharmacies used borrowed licenses. For 10 years from 2008 to 2018, Xu’s daughter instructed pharmacy employees that if patients with chronic diseases did not take the medicine with the prescription, they would exchange drug points at a 30% discount to purchase merchandise or “gift certificates” displayed in the pharmacy, and then falsely posted them on the internal POS system, falsely reporting to the National Health Insurance Department that the medicines had been dispensed and delivered, thereby fraudulently obtaining health insurance benefits.

In addition, pharmacies assign employees without pharmacist qualifications to make adjustments during periods when pharmacists are not on duty (such as nights or weekends), or have on-site pharmacists upload electromagnetic records in the name of other pharmacists who are not on duty, circumventing reasonable dosage restrictions and earning high pharmaceutical service fees.