Maryland Law Blog

According to a SoMDNews.com report, a Prince Frederick physician was recently indicted by a federal grand jury for charges of illegal distribution of drugs and health care fraud in connection to several pain management clinics he operated. The 75-year-old physician was indicted on eight charges of distributing and dispensing methadone, 14 charges of distributing and dispensing oxycodone, and 15 counts of health care fraud, and the indictment alleges that the man ran a “pill mill” out of his clinics in Waldorf, Greenbelt, and Prince Frederick.

The doctor, authorized to dispense medicine to patients for valid purposes, is accused of giving individuals prescriptions for controlled substances, such as oxycodone and methadone, for a fee without any legitimate medical purpose. According to a press release, the indictment states that from at least 2007 through July 2011 the physician also filed fraudulent insurance claims in a scheme to defraud Medicare, Medicaid, and the U.S. Department of Labor, among other organizations, and reportedly submitted claims falsely seeking reimbursement for patients’ office visits that did not occur.

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A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced a Maryland-based rabbi to 51 months in prison for defrauding contributors to his Save a Torah Foundation and selling scrolls with “bogus Holocaust provenance.” As reported by The Washington Post, the Baltimore resident, who was also a Torah scribe who managed his family’s Jewish bookstore in Wheaton, pled guilty in February to mail and wire fraud. The rabbi claimed that he found holy relics at concentration camps, monasteries, and mass graves in Europe, though passport records show he never traveled there.

Prosecutors stated that instead he bought old Torahs from local dealers who made no claims that the scrolls had Holocaust-related historic value, and sold them to individuals with tales of “rescuing the sacred Torah scrolls lost during the Holocaust.” In a 43-page sentencing memo, prosecutors said that the man used these fabricated stories to raise $1.4 million for his charity, and was recently liquidating and reassigning his assets to avoid paying restitution.

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