A pediatrician writes a prescription in twelve minutes. You fill it. Your child takes it. The school reports fewer disruptions. That feels like progress. The sentencing of Done Global’s CEO on July 7 asks parents to look harder at how that prescription actually arrived.
Ruthia He, founder and CEO of Done Global Inc., received six years in federal prison and a $1 million fine for building a telehealth platform that distributed over 37 million Adderall pills by deceiving patients into thinking they had ADHD. Her clinical president, Dr. David Brody, received two years and a $1 million fine. The scheme ran on a “subscription for prescription” model: pay a monthly fee, get automatic refills, and never see the same clinician twice. Clinicians were paid up to $60,000 per month to sign prescriptions every 30 seconds. Initial visits were capped at half the length of a typical examination. Some patients received Adderall refills through involuntary psychiatric holds. Others received them after they had died.
Done Global is an extreme case. It is also a useful mirror.
The Done Global case closed with a six-year sentence for a CEO who built a telehealth platform around 37 million Adderall prescriptions. Here are the questions parents are asking most.
Common questions
Was Done Global the same company as Cerebral?
My child was diagnosed with ADHD via telehealth. Should I be worried?
Does ADHD always need medication?
What questions should I ask at my child’s next ADHD appointment?
Done Global CEO gets 6 years for turning ADHD diagnoses into 30-second auto-refill subscriptions. 37M Adderall pills. Three moms warned them. Done ignored all three. Every parent's question: was your child's diagnosis a real evaluation or a product?
What the Case Actually Shows
Court documents describe a company that spent over $40 million on social media advertisements to “deceive Americans into believing they had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)” and then profit from monthly subscription fees. The platform used auto-refill technology that minimized follow-up appointments: prescribers signed off on refills based on automatically generated messages that a patient wanted a refill. Dr. Brody admitted he never reviewed patient records during refills—that it took him 30 seconds per prescription because there was nothing to check. Per court evidence, Brody told colleagues his dream at Done was to make money “WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO SEE OR TALK TO THE PATIENT[s].”
Three mothers testified at trial about their efforts to warn Done that its stimulants were worsening their children’s mental health—that children were suffering from Adderall-induced psychosis, bipolar disorder, or conditions made worse by continued prescriptions. Done ignored them. The company had no financial incentive to listen: listening might slow the prescription. U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian stated: “Drug traffickers are driven by profits, not people. Whether they operate from a street corner or from a computer, the motive and the resulting harm are the same.”
He and Brody were convicted in November 2025 on charges including conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. The July 2026 sentences closed the case—but opened a question every parent of an ADHD-diagnosed child needs to sit with.
Drug traffickers are driven by profits, not people. Whether they operate from a street corner or from a computer, the motive and the resulting harm are the same.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Done Global Did Not Invent This Model. It Took It to Its Criminal Extreme.
The “diagnose fast, prescribe first” approach did not begin at Done Global, and it will not end with it. What Done Global did was strip away every pretense that diagnosis serves the child. The science is direct about what goes wrong when a support is handed out because it is easier than addressing the actual gap: the incentive to build the underlying skill disappears, and dependence sets in. That is documented in special education’s own research, and it is the mechanism Done Global industrialized. A stimulant that arrives in a 30-second auto-refill cycle is not a treatment plan. It is a product.
The harder look is at what happens in the vast space between Done Global and a genuinely thorough evaluation. A child referred for ADHD who receives a 15-minute telehealth intake, a quick questionnaire, and a prescription has not received a processing profile. Nobody has mapped their working memory, their auditory processing, their executive function, or whether the attention difficulty comes from a skill gap, a sensory issue, anxiety, or something else entirely. The prescription addresses the symptom that was easiest to name. The underlying systems remain where they were, except now the child has learned that the pill is the answer. (For a closer look at the skills beneath ADHD-pattern struggles, see our ADHD resource page.)
Done Global’s collapse reveals what the subscription-for-prescription model produces when profit is the only design constraint. The same question applies anywhere ADHD care treats diagnosis as the destination rather than the starting line: who is building the skills, and what happens the day the prescription is not available?
Key takeaways
- The ‘subscription for prescription’ model went to prison: Done Global’s CEO received six years in federal prison for a system that distributed 37 million Adderall pills via telehealth to patients its clinicians never evaluated.
- Three mothers testified, and Done ignored every one: A system with no financial incentive to ask whether a child was being helped had no mechanism to hear parents who said their children were being harmed.
- The diagnosis is the starting point, not the answer: Any ADHD evaluation that does not map underlying processing skills leaves the most important question unanswered—what exactly needs to be built?
What This Means for Your Child’s ADHD Diagnosis
This case does not mean telehealth is fraudulent. Most telehealth providers operate within clinical standards. It does not mean your child’s ADHD diagnosis is wrong. What it means is this: any diagnosis arrived at quickly, without a full evaluation of your child’s processing profile, is a starting point—not a destination—and it needs to be treated as one.
The right questions are not “is this drug legitimate?” They are: “What did this evaluation actually measure? What cognitive skills is this treatment building alongside managing symptoms? What is the plan if the medication plateaus? Is there a clinician who has actually evaluated my child?” Three mothers asked Done Global those questions. A system optimized for auto-refill had no mechanism to answer them.
A thorough ADHD evaluation includes a full clinical interview, a review of the child’s developmental and academic history, consideration of co-occurring factors, and a plan that includes skill-building alongside any medication. The brain your child has today is not fixed—the imaging evidence on neuroplasticity is clear on that. What changes it is targeted practice, not auto-refill.
WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO SEE OR TALK TO THE PATIENT[s].
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
The three mothers who testified against Done Global did everything right. They noticed, warned, documented, testified. A system that profits from diagnosis had no reason to listen—and so it did not. That is not a one-company failure. That is what happens when the model of ADHD care treats the prescription as the answer and the parent as an obstacle to the next refill.
The better model starts with a full picture of what is actually happening in your child’s brain—not a label to attach to it. If you want to know which processing systems are holding your child back and what it would take to strengthen them, the Learning Success All Access program is built on exactly that.
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Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
References
- U.S. Department of Justice — Done Global CEO and Clinical President Sentenced for $90 Million Adderall Scheme
- New York Times — Telehealth Executives Sentenced in Adderall Scheme
- Bloomberg Law — Telehealth CEO Guilty of Adderall Scheme Gets Six-Year Sentence
- DEA — Done Global CEO Sentenced in $100M Adderall Distribution Scheme
