A federal jury in the Northern District of Texas convicted a medical marketer today for his role in a $55 million fraud conspiracy involving TRICARE, a federal program that provides health insurance benefits to active duty and retired service members and their families, and several other federal health care programs. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Quintan Cockerell, 42, of Palos Verdes Estates, California, worked with others to create and market expensive compounded medications, which are medications intended to be custom-tailored to individual patient needs. However, instead of custom-tailoring these medications, a local pharmacy designed formulations to maximize TRICARE and other federal health care program reimbursements regardless of patient need or medical efficacy. Pharmacy owners and others paid illegal kickbacks to individuals like Cockerell, who recruited area doctors to write prescriptions for these expensive compounded medications, including by creating so-called investment opportunities so that doctors who wrote prescriptions to the pharmacy could profit from the pharmacy operations. Cockerell then spent the proceeds of the scheme on expensive vacations, trips on private jets, and a yacht charter.