Drug Dealing Medical Center Owner Sentenced: U.S. Attorney

CHICAGO, IL — The former owner of a Chicago medical clinic was sentenced Friday following a conviction of selling opioid prescriptions to patients he knew not to have a legitimate need for them, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. Mohammed Shariff, 68, will serve over six years in federal prison.

Mohammed Shariff, 68, pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to knowingly dispense controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose, the release says.

Shariff owned Midtown Medical Center in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. There, he conspired with a physician, Dr. Theodore Galvani, who wrote prescriptions by Shariff's direction, the release says. The clinic often had a line of patients waiting for oxycodone, hydrocodone and other drugs stretching beyond the clinic's doors.

Shariff and Galvani were paid $100 to $200 in exchange for the invalid prescriptions. For those insured under Medicare, the duo submitted false claims, the release says.

In 13 months, between February 2012 and March 2013, the duo brought in at least $584,188 through their scheme.

"During the same period, the pair was responsible for prescribing more than two kilograms of oxycodone, more than 595,000 hydrocodone pills, and more than 190,000 alprazolam pills (commonly known as Xanax), to individuals whom they knew had no legitimate medical need for those drugs," the release says.

Shariff was handed a 75-month sentence by U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber in federal court.

Galvani has since pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges, according to the release. He's awaiting sentencing.

"The defendant chose to make his living in a vitally important industry," Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter M. Flanagan argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum. "Rather than devote himself to people in need of fundamental care, however, he showed an abject disregard of patients and perverted his companies into engines of unlawful profit."