BANGOR

A Bowdoin man was sentenced to nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty to soliciting and taking kickbacks from drug companies while he served as the head of a now-defunct mail-order pharmacy operated by the Penobscot Indian Nation.

Reginald S. Gracie Jr., 41, was also ordered to repay federal taxes in the amount of $41,784 and pleaded guilty to filing false individual income tax returns and returns for the company Gracie Enterprises, Inc.

According to a prepared statement from U.S. Attorney for the District of Maine, Thomas E. Delahanty II, Gracie was sentenced in U.S. District Court to serve three years and 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for the crime.

The investigation by many federal agencies found that Gracie, who took charge of the program called PIN Rx in 2006, solicited and accepted more than $120,000 from six drug companies selling on the Internet.

In that same year, PIN Rx received more than $5 million in MaineCare funds, mostly from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the statement indicates.

Gracie entered a guilty plea to the charges against him in February. According to an Associated Press report from that time, Gracie faced up to 10 years in prison for the kickback charge and up to three years on the tax charges.

The case was investigated by the following federal agencies: the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Inspector General and the Department of Agriculture.