Washington sources reported that federal court has sentenced an Indian-American doctor to nine years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2016 to illegally dispensing prescription painkillers and defrauding Medicare. Pawankumar Jain, 66, was sentenced by the federal court in Las Cruces, New mexico on Thursday, the Las Cruces Sun News reported.
Earlier in 2016, Jain confessed to operating a “pain management” practice and improperly prescribing narcotics such as methadone, with the knowledge the prescriptions would be submitted to Medicare for payment and his license to practice medicine was revoked by the New mexico Medical Board in 2012.
One of Jain’s patients, identified only as “M.E.B.” in court records, died in 2009 of respiratory depression after taking methadone Jain had prescribed. Moreover Jain’s attorney, Mary Stillinger, argued that Jain “lived many years as a law-abiding, contributing member of society. His first offense came in the later years of his career, under the stress of an overburdened practice”.
