Florida: Indian-American Pain Doctor Sentenced in Medicare Fraud Case

02/04/201909/21/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

Last week 66-year-old Jayam Krishna Iyer was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to repay $52,000 in false claims for Medicare reimbursement after years of dispensing dangerous pain meds to patients she didn’t even see!

Dr. Iyer leaves court — Dr. Iyer leaving court last September after admitting guilt. Expressed no remorse! https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/investigations/clearwater-pain-doctor-admits-to-medicare-fraud-and-surrenders-license/1457146533

What is up with these Indian doctors, we recently had another story of an Indian pain doctor in Michigan, see here.
From News India:

Indian-American doctor in Florida sentenced to prison for fraud

An Indian-American doctor in Clearwater, Florida was sent to prison Jan. 30, after being convicted for health care fraud.
U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. sentenced Jayam Krishna Iyer, 66, to six months in federal prison for committing health care fraud, and ordered Iyer to forfeit more than $52,000 in health care fraud proceeds. He also ordered her to pay restitution to the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In addition, the court ordered Iyer to forfeit her Florida medical license, permanently excluding her from participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. And, Iyer agreed to surrender her Drug Enforcement Agency registration number, which had been used to prescribe controlled substances, and not to reapply for a DEA registration number for at least 20 years.
According to the press release from the U.S. Attorney for Middle District of Florida, based on court documents, Iyer owned and operated Creative Medical Center, on Druid Road East in Clearwater. The center functioned as a pain management clinic; Iyer conducted office visits and wrote prescriptions for controlled substances, including oxycodone, morphine, and fentanyl.
Beginning in July 2011 and continuing through December 2017, Iyer carried out a scheme to defraud Medicare by billing for face-to-face office visits with Medicare and Medicaid patients, when, in fact, certain patients had not gone to Iyer’s office and had not been examined by her on the claimed dates, prosecutors found.
Instead, family members of patients had visited Iyer’s office, where she issued prescriptions for Schedule II controlled substances, including oxycodone, to the family members in the patients’ names. Iyer thereby violated a Florida law requiring doctors to perform an in-person office visit and examination of each patient before issuing Schedule II controlled substance prescriptions.

More here.
Some additional information on Dr. Iyer is here at Tampa’s WFLA in September when she admitted her guilt.

Clearwater pain doctor admits to medicare fraud and surrenders license

On Aug. 31, Dr. Iyer signed an agreement with federal prosecutors in Tampa admitting guilt to one felony count of Medicare fraud that will cost her at least $51,000 in restitution in addition to giving up her medical career. She also faces a possible fine of up to $250,000 and as much as 10 years in prison.
Iyer did not express any remorse before, during or after the hearing, but in court freely admitted to stealing from taxpayers through Medicare fraud for a period of at least six years in her practice at the Creative Heath Center located at 1210 Druid Road in Clearwater.
[….]
After a public records request, the Pinellas Medical Examiner sent 8 On Your Side an eight-page list of drugs prescribed by Iyer , including fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone and dilaudid, that turned up in various Medical Examiner investigations of suspicious deaths.
None of those ME cases resulted in a criminal prosecution of Iyer. She has also faced six malpractice lawsuits filed in Pinellas civil court according to court records.
[….]
The physician who earned her medical degree in India said she is a U.S. citizen so she does not face a threat of deportation for her felony conviction.

Go here for the rest of the story and to see the news clip.

I think we have a tendency to think doctors are caring and compassionate and most of all not scammers, but these cases of medical doctors, often ‘new American’ medical doctors, and their involvement in fueling America’s prescription drug epidemic are starting to pile up. I think they need more publicity so that maybe more of you will be able to identify these frauds in your own communities. Where is the national media?

Boston Trial of Indian-American Opioid Drug Executive Underway

01/31/201909/21/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

You might have caught a bit of this story on the national news because it involves a former stripper hired to help sell the drugs.
From the Boston Globe:

The federal government, which has been accused of failing to hold drug companies to account for the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic, hopes to dispel that impression Monday when the first criminal trial of pharmaceutical executives who marketed a painkiller begins.

‘New American’ John Nath Kapoor was born in India

John N. Kapoor, a onetime billionaire and founder of Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics, is scheduled to go on trial in US District Court in Boston along with four former company executives on charges that they acted more like mobsters than pharmaceutical executives when they sold a brand of fentanyl, a powerful and addictive opioid.
In a trial expected to last up to three months, federal prosecutors will try to convince a jury that the five defendants paid bribes and kickbacks to physicians in a nationwide racketeering conspiracy. The payments allegedly induced doctors to prescribe Subsys, an under-the-tongue fentanyl spray approved to treat severe cancer-related pain, for patients who hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer.
The case features several explosive allegations. Prosecutors say that Insys set up a sham “speakers program” to funnel cash to doctors, adjusted payments based on how many prescriptions doctors wrote, misrepresented patients’ medical histories to dupe insurers into covering Subsys for people without cancer, and even hired a woman who was a former stripper and escort service manager as a key sales executive.
[….]
The criminal case marks a rare instance of the government using the criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to go after corporate executives. The statute was approved in 1970, chiefly to prosecute organized crime figures.
[….]
Kapoor is the most prominent of the five Insys defendants. A 75-year-old shaggy-haired entrepreneur who was raised in India, lives in Phoenix, and was — until recently — on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires, Kapoor founded Chandler, Ariz.-based Insys in 1990. For more than a decade, he largely funded it out of his own pocket.

If found guilty, Kapoor could get up to 20 years in the slammer.
Much more here.
Pharmaceutical company fraud investigations should be applauded by all Americans, on the political Left and Right, especially as it relates to the deadly opioid crisis destroying lives in middle America.

I’m guess that almost everyone knows someone addicted to pain meds?

This story reminds me to remind you to check your medicare statements carefully to be sure some doctor isn’t billing you for meds that you didn’t receive or for an amount larger than you actually were prescribed.

Michigan: Feds Bust "pay to stay" Foreign Student Immigration Fraud Network

01/31/201909/21/2019 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

This story should warm your heart—we are nabbing at least some of the cheaters!
This time it was by setting a trap for them with the creation of a fake university with all the trappings of a real college.

univ.offarmington — The feds fake University of Farmington was located in this building says the Detroit News

Thanks to the Detroit News for another juicy story.

Feds used fake Michigan university in immigration sting

Federal agents used a fake university in Farmington Hills to lure alleged phony foreign students who were trying to stay in the United States illegally.
The University of Farmington had no staff, no instructors, no curriculum and no classes but was utilized by undercover Homeland Security agents to identify people involved in immigration fraud, according to federal grand jury indictments unsealed Wednesday.
Eight student recruiters were charged with participating in a conspiracy to help at least 600 foreign citizens stay in the U.S. illegally, according to the indictments, which describe a novel investigation that dates to 2015 but intensified one month into President Donald Trump’s tenure as part of a broader crackdown on illegal immigration.
Simultaneously Wednesday, federal agents arrested dozens of University of Farmington students in a nationwide sweep. The students were arrested on immigration violations and face possible deportation, according to a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Most of the recruiters and students involved are originally from India, according to prosecutors.
“It’s creative and it’s not entrapment,” said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “The government can put out the bait, but it’s up to the defendants to fall for it.”
Those charged include:
• Bharath Kakireddy, 29, of Lake Mary, Florida.
• Aswanth Nune, 26, of Atlanta.
• Suresh Reddy Kandala, 31, of Culpeper, Virginia.
• Phanideep Karnati, 35, of Louisville, Kentucky.
• Prem Kumar Rampeesa, 26, of Charlotte, North Carolina.
• Santosh Reddy Sama, 28, of Fremont, California.
• Avinash Thakkallapally, 28, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
• Naveen Prathipati, 29, of Dallas.
[….]
“… the university was being used by foreign citizens as a ‘pay to stay’ scheme which allowed these individuals to stay in the United States as a result of of foreign citizens falsely asserting that they were enrolled as full-time students in an approved educational program and that they were making normal progress toward completion of the course of study,” the indictment reads.

More here. Please go read it and send traffic to the story because the reporter, Robert Snell, has been doing great work on fraud cases.

Are you thinking about this? As we focus virtually all mainstream media coverage on the crisis at our southern border (yes, it is important), the national media is keeping us in the dark about some huge stories involving illegal immigrants (and legal ones !) who are ripping us off through fraud and other criminal activity that we must suffer and pay for.