Eli Lilly claims in a civil lawsuit that it's the victim of a $200 million plus drug rebate fraud tied to Pentecostal church bishops and businesses.
Eli Lilly says it has uncovered a long-running scheme to steal more than $200 million in rebates from its diabetes medication, Trulicity, accusing several bishops at a major Pentecostal church of fraud.
The company filed a 66-page civil lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami.
Here's how the scheme worked, according to Lilly: A Florida mail-order pharmacy called DrugPlace bought large quantities of Trulicity for years through authorized distributors, claiming the drugs were dispensed to patients who were members of the church. But Lilly alleges that in reality DrugPlace sold the Trulicity on the secondary market at the same time it was collecting fraudulent rebates from Lilly.
According to the lawsuit, DrugPlace worked with Community Health Initiative, an organization affiliated with the Church of God in Christ that purportedly helped church members obtain expensive prescription drugs at a reduced cost. Lilly alleges DrugPlace served as the program's pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, handling prescription drug claims and rebate negotiations with drugmakers on the program's behalf.
DrugPlace and Community Health operate from the same address in Tennessee, according to the lawsuit.
Lilly alleges the organizations used members of the Church of God in Christ to support false rebate claims and said many of the patients tied to those submissions either did not exist or could not be verified.
The church, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, describes itself on its website as a "global movement of Pentecostal faith" with millions of members worldwide. The church itself is not named as a defendant, though several of its bishops are accused in the suit.
The scheme has been going on at least six years, Lilly said in the filing. It learned of the alleged fraud in 2025, it said, through a data analysis of rebate claims.
The complaint says that analysis revealed an unusual pattern: Every Trulicity prescription submitted through the program reflected the same quantity and 30-day supply period, with almost no refills or claim reversals. In addition, the rebate claims involved only Trulicity, rather than a broader range of drugs typically seen in legitimate patient populations.
To justify the Trulicity volume order, Lilly said, DrugPlace claimed the church had 7 million members, 2.5 million of whom qualified for enrollment in the Community Health program. But according to a Pew Religion in America 2025 survey cited in the complaint, the total number of members of the Church of God in Christ is estimated to be about 1.9 million individuals.
Other pharmaceutical manufacturers also have been defrauded in this rebate scheme, Lilly said, without naming them.
Lilly sued both DrugPlace and Community Health, claiming they greatly profited from buying and reselling the Trulicity because they collected both the rebate payments and the proceeds when they resold each box.
While the lawsuit says DrugPlace submitted rebate claims for "hundreds of thousands of boxes of Trulicity," it does not note how much the organization allegedly profited from reselling the drug.
Lilly is seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction.
The company also sued church leaders who allegedly assisted in and profited from the rebate scheme: Readus C. Smith III, of Jacksonville, Florida, who is secretary-general of health and business for the church; Jerry Maynard Sr., of Ashland City, Tennessee, a church bishop and businessman; his son Jerry Maynard II, of Nashville, Tennessee, a church pastor, business consultant and former member of the Metro Nashville Davidson Council; and Maynard Sr.'s daughter Misha Maynard, of Watertown, Tennessee, a church pastor.
The suit identifies Smith as CEO of Community Health as well as another company that recruits doctors to provide healthcare for church members.
Maynard Sr. promoted Community Health to church members, the suit said, and his son is its board chairman and did legal work for DrugPlace. Misha Maynard is Community Health's vice president of operations, according to the filing.
CNBC contacted the individual defendants named in this article as well as DrugPlace, Community Health and the church — which is not a defendant — but has not heard back.
In addition, the suit names Paul Joshua Leight, co-owner and president of DrugPlace; and Kevin Michael Singer, co-owner and vice president of DrugPlace.
In a statement to CNBC, a Lilly spokesperson said the company "brought this case to stop fraud and protect patients' access to its medicines." "When the defendants learned that they had been discovered, DrugPlace shuttered its Nashville pharmacy and began liquidating assets—conduct consistent with covering its tracks," the statement said.
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