From charges of bank fraud to running a pill mill, a number of doctors ended up in the headlines this week.
Here’s a rundown of the doctors who faced charges or convictions:
A federal grand jury in Delaware indicted a Maryland doctor on charges of conspiring to commit bank fraud and making false statements on loan applications, according to the Associated Press.
An indictment unsealed this week charges Zahid Aslam, 44, an obstetrician-gynecologist, who has practices in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylania, with involvement in an illegal scheme with a man who worked as loan officer at Citibank and WSFS, according to the report. Prosecutors said Aslam recruited two associates to apply for loans because he knew he would not qualify for financing.
A New York doctor was charged with running a $40 million pill mill, according to the New York Daily News. Federal authorities arrested David Taylor, 74, along with two other men, and charged them with running a pill mill that brought millions of painkillers into the Staten Island community.
Law enforcement officials told the newspaper that 500 patients were sent to the doctor each month by the scheme’s alleged mastermind.
A former Kansas City, Missouri, physician who lost his medical license due to an earlier fraud scheme was sentenced Thursday in federal court for his role in a fraud scheme that involved disability examinations of veterans, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri.
Wayne W. Williamson, 74, of Kansas City, was sentenced to one year and three months in federal prison without parole and ordered to pay almost $40,000 in restitution.
Working as a medical consultant at Industrial Medical Center, prosecutors said Williamson performed disability examinations for the Department of Veterans Affairs under IMC’s contract with Logistics Health, Inc., to determine the extent of veterans’ impairments and eligibility for benefits.
That was in violation of the contract, which required the examinations be conducted by credentialed, licensed providers.
In Alabama, James M. Crumb, a physician and rehabilitative specialist practicing in Mobile, along with a local neurosurgeon physician group, collectively agreed to pay $1.4 million to resolve allegations they violated the False Claims Act, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Alabama.
Crumb, who practiced as Mobility Metabolism and Wellness, was charged in fraudulent schemes to maximize payment from the Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare programs, prosecutors said.
The government filed a civil lawsuit against Crumb, his medical practice and the neurosurgery group Coastal Neurological Institute, alleging they knowingly billed those federal healthcare programs for medically unreasonable and unnecessary ultrasound guidance used with routine lab blood draws, and with Botox and trigger point injections.