An Indian-origin physician, Kain Kumar, 56, has been sentenced to two years in prison and has been ordered to pay fine, asset forfeiture and restitution of over a million dollars. He has been engaged in a multi-faceted health care fraud scheme and has prescribed thousands of opioid painkillers and muscle relaxers in an illegal manner.
Kumar was sentenced by the US District Judge Philip Gutierrez of the Central; District of California. He has also ordered Kumar to pay USD 509,365 in restitution, USD 494,900 in asset forfeiture and a USD 72,000 fine.
Kumar was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release after he has been pleaded guilty in April 2019 for fraud in the health care. He has admitted that, he defrauded the Medical health care benefit programme from Ferbruary 2011 until May 2016 as he prescribed unnecessary home health services in exchange for the payment of illegal kickbacks that he received from the California-based home health agency called Star Home Health Resources Inc.
He admitted saying that submission of false and fraudulent claims for the reimbursement to Medicare beneficiaries which were not examined by him personally or the patients who he only examined briefly, were made.
Kumar further admitted that he had prescribed drugs which were not medically necessary and which were paid for by the Medicare Part D program. He also admitted that, he has prescribes 23,826 pills of the opioid drug hydrocodone and 38,459 pills of the muscle-relaxer carisoprodol between February 2013 and January 2016.
Kumar has directed his office staff to issue the prescriptions for these drugs though the patients were not examined by the doctor personally. He asked his office staff to prescribe the drugs by signing Kumar’s name on the prescriptions or by providing pre-signed prescriptions. The office staff of Kain Kumar were not medical professionals.
