UES Doctors Indicted In Fentanyl Kickback Scheme, Feds Say

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Five prominent doctors working on the Upper East Side were indicted Friday in a scheme where the medical professionals were paid bribes and kickbacks in exchange for prescribing millions of dollars worth of a specific fentanyl-based medication, federal prosecutors announced.

Gordon Freedman, Jeffrey Goldstein, Todd Schlifstein, Dialecti Voudouris and Alexandru Burducea are all facing charges of anti-kickback conspiracy, violation of the anti-kickback statute and honest services fraud conspiracy, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said. Goldstein and Voudouris are facing additional charges of aggravated identity theft.

"These prominent doctors swore a solemn oath to place their patients’ care above all else. Instead, they engaged in a malignant scheme to prescribe Fentanyl, a dangerous and potentially fatal narcotic 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, in exchange for bribes in the form of speaker fees," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.

In 2012 the pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics created a "speaker's bureau" under the guise of education medical professional's about the company's fentanly-based painkiller spray Subsys, federal prosecutors said in an indictment. Subsys was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the management of pain in cancer patients, and fentanyl is considered 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Over the next few years, doctors participated in bogus speaker programs for hundreds of thousands of dollars in "speaking fees." The events were "predominantly social affairs where no educational presentation about the Fentanyl Spray occurred," according to the federal indictment.

After receiving the speaker fees the amount of Subsys prescribed by each doctor increased, federal prosecutors said. Freedman's prescriptions alone accounted for more than $1 million in sales for the fentanyl-based drug, according to prosecutors.

The five doctors were arrested Friday morning by federal and local law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Attorney's office announced. The accused schemers were expected to appear before a federal judge in the afternoon.

Two employees of the pharmaceutical company — Jonathan Roper and Fernando Serrano — pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the scheme and are now cooperating with the government, federal prosecutors said.

"A substance as powerful as Fentanyl should be prescribed based only on doctors’ own independent medical judgment. In this case, as alleged, a series of doctors were convinced to push aside their ethical obligations and prescribe a drug for profit to patients who turned to them for help," FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement

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