Doctor secretly gave ‘cheaper’ unauthorized injections at Missouri pain clinics, feds say

For almost 10 years, authorities say a Missouri doctor was surreptitiously injecting his patients with a cheaper, foreign and unauthorized version of the injections they were supposed to get.

The patients were meant to receive Food and Drug Administration-approved Orthovisc — a prescription medication that’s injected into knees to help relieve osteoarthritis pain — but at least 1,000 times, authorities say patients were secretly given injections that did not have FDA approval.

Dr. Abdul Naushad has been sentenced to prison after a jury found he and his wife, Wajiha Naushad, guilty of conspiracy and health care fraud, according to an Aug. 25 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.

“The evidence at trial conclusively established that Defendants chose to use unapproved injections on their patients—not to pass any cost-savings on to their patients—but for the financial benefit of themselves and themselves alone,” prosecutor Derek Wiseman said in the sentencing memorandum.

Authorities say that after patients were injected with the foreign substitute at the Naushads’ pain clinics, they defrauded taxpayer-funded health insurance programs by billing for “a more expensive medication than was used.”

“The Naushads betrayed the trust of elderly and impoverished patients to fund a lavish lifestyle that included a $2 million mansion, two vacation houses and four luxury cars,” according to the news release.

But the defense attorneys representing the Town and Country couple described their prosecution as “misguided.”

“It is unfortunate that the government abused its power to turn what should have been a civil non-compliance issue into a criminal case,” attorney Khalid Kahloon told McClatchy News. “We are confident that the Court of Appeals will put an end to this overzealous and misguided prosecution.”

“We are pleased that the Court allowed our client to remain on bond while we appeal what little remains of this case,” Alex Little, counsel for Dr. Abdul Naushad, told McClatchy News. “The government dismissed half the charges in the middle of trial and the jury found him not guilty of ten more charges. Although this prosecution has been misguided from the beginning, we are confident that the Court of Appeals will reverse the final two counts and let Dr. Naushad get back to serving his patients.”

Dr. Abdul Naushad, 58, is ordered to spend a year in prison, while Wajiha Naushad, 47, was sentenced to three years of probation. They are also required to repay $235,977 in restitution.

In court records, the federal prosecutor says the Naushads took many actions to hide what they were doing.

In one instance, they fired their chief of radiology and purchasing after he told Dr. Abdul Naushad he shouldn’t use unapproved injections on their patients, according to the sentencing memorandum. Their next chief of purchasing told authorities, if “you asked too many questions (at their pain clinics), you end up losing your job.”

And when the FDA seized a shipment of foreign injections headed toward a pain clinic, authorities say the Naushads had the next shipment sent to their home.

Wajiha Naushad is also accused of lying to her compliance officer about the unapproved Orthovisc injections, stating they came from a U.S. distributor.

“But Defendants’ crimes were not simply limited to deceiving their employees and government health insurers,” Wiseman said in court records. “In executing their scheme to defraud, Defendants failed to disclose to their patients that they were being injected with cheap, foreign injections that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”

“At a bare minimum, these patients deserved to know what they were being injected with, and they were owed the right to consent to their own medical treatments,” he continued. “But Defendants took that right away from their patients.”

Meanwhile, authorities say Dr. Abdul Naushad is also under federal investigation as he’s accused of “overprescribing opioids to patients who suffered overdose death.” He’s also accused of taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loan money that he knew he was not entitled to receive.”

Town and Country is a suburb west of St. Louis.

This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 7:30 AM with the headline "Doctor secretly gave ‘cheaper’ unauthorized injections at Missouri pain clinics, feds say."