March 4, 10

NEWS / New York Physician Sentenced to State Prison for Selling Prescriptions for Controlled Dangerous Subs

TRENTON - Attorney General Paula T. Dow and Division of Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor announced that a New York doctor was sentenced to state prison today for selling prescriptions of controlled dangerous substances (CDS) to Medicaid recipients.

According to Acting Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Riza Dagli, Bipin Parikh, 64, of Williston Park, New York, was sentenced to three years in state prison and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $685,209 to the Medicaid program by Superior Court Judge Kevin G. Callahan in Hudson County. The sentence was based on Parikh’s Nov. 9, 2009 guilty plea to an accusation which charged health care claims fraud and dispensing of CDS.

In pleading guilty, Parikh, a physician, admitted that between January 2004 and March 2008, he dispensed prescriptions to Medicaid recipients when the drugs prescribed were not medically necessary. An investigation determined that based on the unnecessary prescriptions dispensed by Parikh, Medicaid was fraudulently billed at least $685,209. The accusation also charged that Parikh sold prescriptions for Percocet, a Schedule II narcotic Drug, to undercover police officers.

The charges resulted from a joint-investigation by the Division of Criminal Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Special Investigations Unit of the Jersey City Police Department.

Detectives Jacqueline Latty and Kevin Gannon and Deputy Attorneys General Debra A. Conrad and Linda Rinaldi and Analysts Cleair Budhu and Anne Howell were assigned to the investigation. Conrad represented the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor at the sentencing.

http://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases10/pr20100303d.html