Pharmacist pardoned by Trump seeks to recover $531,000 in restitution payments
On Friday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that John Duncan Fordham, a Georgia pharmacist pardoned by former President Donald Trump for his role in a massive health care fraud scheme, is now suing the state to demand they refund all the restitution money he had to pay as part of his sentence.
"Fordham spent four years in prison after his 2005 health care fraud conviction, and his assets were seized and liquidated to help make whole the state and a private insurance company he had defrauded. At the time of his January 2021 pardon, Fordham had made good on $531,000 in restitution payments," reported Dylan Jackson. "And while the pardon erased the nearly half million he and his company still owed, that wasn’t good enough for Fordham. On Thursday, he took the extraordinary step of suing the state and the insurance company to pay him the hundreds of thousands he had already paid in restitution, claiming that Trump’s pardon had entitled him to recover the funds — plus interest."
Fordham was convicted of fraud after GOP state lawmaker Robin Williams steered a contract for the East Georgia Community Mental Health Center to his business, in exchange for kickbacks. Williams was also convicted.
"In addition to the nearly $500,000 that were seized following his conviction, Fordham had continued to make monthly payments totaling $46,000 until Trump’s pardon, the complaint reads," said the report. "He paid roughly $259,000 to the Georgia Department of Administrative Services, an agency that provides financial services to state and local government entities and a defendant in Fordham’s suit. Fordham paid Great American Insurance Company, the other defendant in his suit, $272,000 in restitution, records show."
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According to Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt, who studies presidential pardons, there is no precedent for a pardon retroactively entitling a convicted felon to all the restitution payments they made prior to the pardon.
This comes as Trump has vowed he will kick the pardon power into high gear if re-elected president, including potential pardons for the perpetrators of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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