Eli Lilly’s lawsuit alleges rebate fraud is linked to Pentecostal church leaders
Eli Lilly says it has uncovered a long-standing scheme to steal more than $200 million in rebates for its diabetes drug Trulicity and is accusing several bishops of a major Pentecostal church of fraud.
The company filed a 66-page civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Tuesday.
Here’s how the system worked, according to Lilly: For years, a mail-order pharmacy called DrugPlace in Florida bought large quantities of Trulicity through authorized distributors, claiming the drugs were dispensed to patients who were members of the church. But Lilly claims that DrugPlace actually sold the Trulicity on the secondary market while collecting fraudulent rebates from Lilly.
According to the lawsuit, DrugPlace worked with the Community Health Initiative, an organization affiliated with the Church of God in Christ, which allegedly helped church members obtain expensive prescription medications at a reduced cost. Lilly alleges that DrugPlace served as the program’s Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) and handled prescription drug claims and rebate negotiations with drug manufacturers on behalf of the program.
According to the lawsuit, DrugPlace and Community Health operate out of the same address in Tennessee.
Lilly alleges the organizations used members of the Church of God in Christ to support false reimbursement claims and said many of the patients associated with those claims 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, although several of its bishops are accused in the lawsuit.
The project has been going on for at least six years, Lilly said in the filing. It was said that we found out about the alleged fraud in 2025 through a data analysis of discount claims.
The complaint says the analysis revealed an unusual pattern: Every Trulicity prescription submitted through the program reflected the same quantity and 30-day delivery period, and there were almost no refills or claim reversals. Additionally, the reimbursement claims only related to Trulicity and not a broader range of medications typically seen in legitimate patient populations.
To justify Trulicity’s 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. However, according to a 2025 Pew Religion in America survey cited in the complaint, the total number of members of the Church of God in Christ is estimated at approximately 1.9 million people.
Other pharmaceutical manufacturers were also defrauded by this discount system, Lilly said, without naming them.
Lilly sued both DrugPlace and Community Health, claiming that they profited greatly from the purchase and resale of the Trulicity because they collected both the rebate payments and the proceeds when each box was resold.
While the lawsuit states that DrugPlace filed reimbursement claims for “hundreds of thousands of cases of Trulicity,” it does not mention how much the organization allegedly profited from reselling the drug.
Lilly is seeking a temporary restraining order and temporary restraining order.
The company also sued church leaders who allegedly participated in and benefited from the rebate scheme: Readus C. Smith III of Jacksonville, Florida, the church’s general secretary for health and economic affairs; Jerry Maynard Sr. of Ashland City, Tennessee, a church bishop and businessman; his son, Jerry Maynard II of Nashville, Tennessee, church pastor, business consultant and former member of the Metro Nashville Davidson Council; and Maynard Sr.’s daughter Misha Maynard of Watertown, Tenn., a minister at the church.
The lawsuit identifies Smith as the CEO of Community Health and another company that recruits doctors to provide health care to church members.
Maynard Sr. promoted community health among church members, the lawsuit says, and his son is chairman of the board and worked as an attorney for DrugPlace. According to the filing, Misha Maynard is vice president of operations for Community Health.
CNBC reached out to the individual defendants named in this article, as well as DrugPlace, Community Health and the church — which is not a defendant — but did not receive a response.
Additionally, the lawsuit 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 “filed this case to stop fraud and protect patient access to its medicines.”
“When the defendants learned they had been discovered, DrugPlace closed its Nashville pharmacy and began liquidating assets – conduct consistent with covering its tracks,” the statement said.
