The founder and former CEO of Done Global, Ruthia He, a California-based digital mental health company, was sentenced today to six years in prison and a fine of $1 million for orchestrating a scheme that used her company’s technology platform, compensation structure, and clinical protocols to illegally distribute over 37 million pills of Adderall, defraud insurers of over $12 million, and obstruct the federal investigation that followed.
The defendant spent over $40 million on social media advertisements to deceive Americans into believing they had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), falsely diagnosing patients with ADHD, and distributing Adderall, including to patients who the company was warned were suffering from Adderall psychosis, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions that were worsened by stimulant prescriptions.
The goal of the conspiracy was to achieve an over-$1 billion valuation by fuelling user growth through a subscription-based prescription business model, in which patients paid a monthly fee for prescriptions that were automatically refilled and delivered via a frictionless technology platform. Co-defendant David Brody, Done’s former clinical president, was separately sentenced to two years in prison and a $1 million fine.
According to court documents, the defendants used a technology platform, management incentives, and clinical protocols designed together to corrupt medical decision-making on a national scale. Defendants sought to build a billion-dollar technology company and raise money from investors by advertising easy access to Adderall and other stimulants in exchange for payment of a monthly subscription fee.
Other ads deceived Americans who suffered from other mental health conditions — or simply from inattentiveness due to ageing or a lack of structure due to work-from-home policies — into thinking that they were suffering from ADHD, and that Adderall was the solution to their problems.
Evidence at trial showed that the defendants used a combination of carrots and sticks to cause unnecessary prescriptions. The defendants refused to hire or fired Done clinicians who did not participate in the conspiracy, while paying up to $60,000 per month to clinicians who signed Adderall prescriptions every 30 seconds.
The defendants pressured clinicians to diagnose ADHD in initial visits capped at half the length of a typical examination and pressured them to prescribe stimulants to patients who the clinicians did not believe had ADHD or who were at risk for serious side effects.
The defendants also used an “auto-refill” platform feature after an initial diagnosis to minimise follow-up appointments, in which prescribers signed Adderall prescriptions based on an automatically generated message indicating that a patient desired a refill. Because of these policies, some patients went years without seeing clinicians, who continually authorised refills even through involuntary psychiatric holds or after the patients had died.
Mr Brody himself personally wrote prescriptions for 394,324 Schedule II stimulant pills prescribed to 6,559 Done members who were complete strangers to him: he never evaluated them or even reviewed a single patient record. Mr Brody even admitted that “it only (took him) 30 seconds per refill” because he never checked patients’ medical records. As he told Ms He, his dream job at Done would allow him to make money “without ever having to see or talk to the patient(s)”.
The evidence at trial showed that defendants were repeatedly warned by clinical leaders that they would face “legal consequences” for furthering illegal prescriptions, but they nevertheless persisted. He told providers and employees who raised concerns that she would buy an expensive luxury car for the “first person to get arrested”.
Defendants also prohibited independent clinical practitioners from discharging patients, and patients continued to receive Adderall even after concerned family members repeatedly notified Done that their children were suffering from bipolar, Adderall-induced psychosis, or other mental health conditions that could be worsened by continued prescriptions. Three mothers testified at trial about their desperate efforts to warn Done that it should not be prescribing to their children, which Done ignored.
Mr Brody encouraged Done’s practitioners to disregard the widely accepted DSM-V criteria. Mr Brody described these addictive substances to Done employees as candy that Done providers handed out like Santa Claus. Mr Brody acknowledged that Done’s practices were “on the edge” of the law, remarking that people who were “really into the law” were not his cup of tea. When one prescriber expressed concerns about the legality of Done’s prescribing practices, Mr Brody said that she should prescribe stimulants to patients “no matter what and not worry about going to jail”.
To ensure that members continued paying monthly subscription fees, Ms He, Mr Brody, and others conspired to defraud insurers so that Done members could use insurance to pay for Adderall dispensed at pharmacies. Ms He, Mr Brody, and others submitted false and fraudulent prior authorisation requests to insurers, which claimed that Done followed the DSM-5 in diagnosing ADHD, utilised urine drug screens, and falsely claimed that non-stimulants had previously been tried without success.
As a result, Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurers paid more than $12.3 million.
In 2022, faced with media scrutiny, Ms He and Mr Brody lied about Done’s policies. When national pharmacy chains began blocking Done prescriptions due to safety concerns, the defendants falsely claimed to have robust compliance measures to ensure the pills kept flowing. Internal documents showed that Ms He ultimately created a secondary entity, Mindful Mental Wellness, specifically to bypass pharmacy blocks and continue dispensing stimulants.
The Health Care Fraud Unit’s investigation extended beyond the individual clinicians writing the prescriptions to examine how corporate decision-makers controlled the organisation’s operations.
To obstruct the government’s investigation, the evidence at trial showed that Ms He moved operations to China, thereby making personnel and evidence unavailable. After receipt of the grand jury subpoena issued to Done, Ms He instructed Done employees to move to encrypted messaging applications, such as Signal and WhatsApp, to discuss sensitive company business, instead of using official company platforms that were being collected by Done’s attorneys for production to the government.
Ms He also enabled “disappearing messages” in her communications with Done colleagues, making them impossible to retrieve. Ms He also personally deleted and directed employees to delete incriminatory documents and messages from the company servers.
As the investigation closed in, Ms He continued to move assets and company operations abroad. She researched non-extradition countries on her MacBook and saved a screenshot of the results.
In February 2023, security agents intercepted Ms He on her way to the airport, where she was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong. She surrendered her passport and was warned that leaving the country would result in arrest. Four months later, however, she secretly obtained a Chinese travel document that would allow her to travel to China — a fact she concealed from the court and law enforcement following her arrest and that ultimately led to her pretrial detention due to her risk of flight. He also set up a shell company — MakeBelieve Asia — and transferred millions of dollars to China.
In November 2025, Ms He and Brody were both convicted of one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, four counts of distribution of controlled substances, and one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. He was also convicted of one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.