Serving 3½ years in prison after pleading guilty to taking part in a $3 million health care fraud scheme, former Georgia insurance commissioner and gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine has voluntarily surrendered his law license.
At his sentencing in July, Oxendine told an Atlanta judge that his actions were “stupid, stupid, stupid.” The 62-year-old was fined $25,000 and ordered to pay more than $760,000 in restitution.
Four months earlier, Oxendine pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud as part of a deal with prosecutors, who wanted him to spend three years and eight months in prison and pay a $700,000 fine.
“I screwed up,” he told U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones. “I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed of what I did.”
Oxendine is serving his time at a minimum-security prison near Pensacola, Florida, and will be subject to three years of supervision upon his release, records show. He is being held at the same prison as former reality TV star Todd Chrisley, who was sentenced to 12 years for tax evasion and bank fraud.
Oxendine served as insurance commissioner for 16 years before launching an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010. His attorneys argued that he was just a middleman in the scheme orchestrated by Alpharetta physician Jeffrey Gallups, who pleaded guilty pre-indictment to submitting fraudulent insurance claims. Gallups was sentenced in June 2022 to three years in prison, ordered to pay over $700,000 in restitution and fined $25,000.
The scheme intended to net $3 million and resulted in a loss to insurance companies of $760,454, authorities said.
Oxendine, an attorney and insurance consultant, told the judge that he just wanted to please Gallups, who at the time was a friend and client. He said he didn’t have any excuses for his actions.
“I got it wrong,” he said. “I just didn’t want to say ‘no’ to somebody, and it was just stupid. It’s my fault. I was the lawyer.”
Jones said Oxendine’s involvement in the scheme to cheat and steal was intentional. He said Oxendine, who claimed to be “helping the little guy” as insurance commissioner, wound up “hurting the little guy” instead.
“You may not have been the leader, but you knew on Day 1 that Dr. Gallups approached you with this it was wrong,” the judge told him. “It wasn’t a mistake.”
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