I am a United States Marine. I served this country believing in its most basic promise: that every person is entitled to a fair trial. That promise is not abstract to me—I lost sixteen friends defending it. That is why what happened to me in a federal courtroom last November still troubles me deeply.
I was scheduled to testify as a defense witness in a federal co-conspiracy trial involving the Kouza brothers. I had been on the witness list for months. My testimony concerned pharmacy data, audit procedures, and the technical flaws underlying the government’s case—subjects in which I have served repeatedly as a qualified expert.
Then, less than twelve hours before I was to take the stand, everything changed.
On the evening of November 3, 2024, defense counsel informed me that federal prosecutors had sent an email warning that if I testified the next morning, I risked being added to the conspiracy and criminally charged myself. No indictment. No explanation. No opportunity to review exhibits. Just a warning—delivered at the last possible moment.
That is not justice. That is intimidation.
Because defense counsel were not my attorneys, they could not advise me. I immediately contacted my own lawyer. She had not been involved in the trial and had not seen the government’s exhibits. While she was confident I had done nothing illegal, she explained the reality: I could still be charged, forced to retain criminal counsel at enormous cost, and spend years defending myself before ultimately being cleared. Based on that risk—and past experience with flawed and biased administrative proceedings—she could not recommend that I testify.
So I declined.
As a result, I was silenced. And because other defense witnesses’ testimony depended on mine, the Kouza brothers presented no defense witnesses at all.
That outcome was no accident.
Why My Testimony Mattered
The central issue in the Kouza case involved Michigan’s invoice audit bulletin, MSA 15-15, which became effective July 1, 2015. The bulletin required pharmacies to retain seven years of purchase invoices to prove they had acquired the drugs they dispensed.
Yet the Michigan Office of Inspector General retroactively applied this requirement back to 2010—five years before the bulletin existed. I had challenged this exact practice in other cases. In one appeal, a circuit court judge ruled that the OIG could not backdate the bulletin and threw out the audit entirely.
Despite that ruling, the OIG continued using retroactive standards in the Kouza audits.
Even more troubling, OIG agents with no pharmacy software experience entered pharmacies and seized a Drug Utilization Report (DUR), falsely treating it as a dispensing report. Pharmacists themselves were unfamiliar with this report. The OIG was repeatedly informed—by me and others—that the DUR was not a dispensing record. Still, it was used as the foundation for overpayment claims.
In administrative hearings, judges within the same department as the OIG agents consistently sided with the agency. At one hearing, after an affidavit denied that the DUR was used, an agent admitted under oath that the report title had been changed at the direction of OIG leadership—without altering the underlying data.
These practices were not about preventing fraud. They were about generating recoveries.
No Fraud Proven—At Any Level
Fraud requires intent, billing, and non-dispensing. Across approximately 1.5 million prescriptions filled by the Kouza pharmacies over ten years, the government could not identify a single prescription that was billed and not dispensed.
Yet the alleged overpayment grew—from $3.1 million in state proceedings to $15 million in federal court—based not on actual financial data, but on an “intended loss” theory.
This is especially striking because the federal government had already obtained the pharmacies’ banking records. Those records showed approximately $41 million in revenue against $31 million in drug costs—a 24 percent margin, entirely normal for a retail pharmacy.
The real money trail told a mundane story. It was ignored.
A System That Punishes Without Accountability
Years into these audits, the OIG quietly halted proceedings after discovering its database failed to account for third-party liability claims—Medicaid prescriptions that had been reversed as required by federal law. Correcting that error significantly reduced overpayment figures. Whether earlier pharmacies were reimbursed remains unclear.
Meanwhile, independent pharmacies were expected to manually reconcile thousands of invoices across years, matching drugs with dozens of possible National Drug Codes—an impossible task for most small businesses.
And the consequences extended far beyond the defendants. Fifteen unrelated pharmacies were shuttered. Employees lost jobs. Family members with no involvement in the case saw their businesses close simply because they shared a last name.
Why This Matters
The Department of Justice knew I could explain the data. It knew my testimony would challenge the narrative. And it chose to ensure the jury never heard it.
When prosecutors use the threat of indictment to silence witnesses—especially on the eve of testimony—the integrity of the justice system is at risk. A trial where defendants present no witnesses is not neutral ground. Jurors notice. Conclusions follow.
I did not serve this country so that fear would replace fairness in its courtrooms.
Witness intimidation—whether overt or strategic—has no place in American justice. If we tolerate it, we erode the very liberties we claim to defend.
Wayne Seiler is a United States Marine veteran from Northville, Michigan.