As reported by the Rockland County Times, a physician nicknamed "Dr. Feel Good" has pleaded guilty to a fraud scheme involving selling millions of dollars worth of prescription narcotics to dealers and not reporting his true income, thought to be almost $500,000, to avoid paying a higher income tax.
Manhattan resident Dr. D.B., 60, also pleaded guilty to possessing methylphenidate (speed) illegally.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman stated, "Instead of caring for the sick, Dr. (D.B.) used his medical license to place powerful addictive narcotics in the hands of drug dealers and feed a prescription drug epidemic that is devastating communities and families across New York. My office will use every means available to prosecute doctors who feed this corrosive drug epidemic in order to line their own pockets."
D.B. pleaded guilty to a total of four felony charges: Criminal Sale of a Prescription of a Controlled Substance, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Fourth Degree, Criminal Tax Fraud in the Third Degree and Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree.
He will face between one to three years in prison at his sentencing on June 11, and will pay $42,712 restitution of unpaid income taxes. The amount of money not reported in taxes was $240,000 for the 2010 New York State Personal Income Tax Returns and a minimum of $250,000 not reported to the state again in 2011.
Between May 2011 and August 2012, D.B. confessed to selling approximately 240 oxycodone pills, among other painkillers, to both drug dealers and other individuals without valid medical reasons.
In February of 2010 D.B. admitted to selling prescriptions to F.W. – an alleged drug dealer.
Prescriptions were sold for as much as $300 per, using false names for patients, and the total dollar worth stretched up into the millions.
D.B. sold prescriptions from his office on Burd Street at first, then later, he began selling out of his West 54th Street office address.
F.W., 52, is also facing nine years in jail for drug possession charges and grand larceny. He allegedly caused Medicaid to pay thousands of dollars in error to pharmacies in the drug-selling scheme.
New legislature, in place since Dr. D.B.'s case, tracks a patient's prescription drug history and requires physicians to update records in real time. The Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing Act, I-STOP, was authored by Schneiderman and was unanimously passed in New York State in 2012.
Schneiderman thanked several entities for their assistance in the investigation: The New York State Police; the New York State Department of Health, Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement; the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance; the Orange County District Attorney's Office; the Rockland County District Attorney's Office; and the Town of Clarkstown Police Department.
The prosecutors in the case were Regional Director Anne Jardine and Special Assistant Attorney General Christopher Borek of the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
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