A married couple formerly of New Canaan was charged with health care fraud that cost victim health care programs $1.5 million in losses.

Kwasi Gyambibi, 40, and Kakra Gyambibi, 37, began to defraud the state’s Pharmacy Benefit Plan, TRICARE and other health care programs in 2014 and 2015. They did this by submitting prescriptions for compound pharmacy medications prepared and dispensed by Advantage Pharmacy.

Kwasi Gyambibi was formerly employed by the state of Connecticut and worked at UConn-Stamford, and Kakra Gyambibi is a physician who worked as a hospitalist at Stamford Hospital. Through this access, Kakra Gyambibi signed the prescriptions even though she did not treat, examine or meet with the patients for whom the prescriptions were written. The victim health care programs paid Advantage Pharmacy for the compound prescription drugs based on Kakra Gyambibi’s false claims. Advantage Pharmacy then paid commissions of between 15 percent to 25 percent to sales representatives, which included Kwasi Gyambibi and his cousin.

The indictment also adds that the Gyambibis were induced in the victim health care programs to pay Advantage Pharmacy more than $280,000 for their own compound prescription drugs.

The entire scheme is said to cause more than $1.5 million in losses to the victim health care programs, according to the indictment. The Gyambibis face up to 10 years in prison on 16 counts of health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.