The doctor was allegedly handing out AIDS prescriptions to people who didn't need them and billed for procedures he never performed.
Officials say the fraud was out of control, and they'll be announcing a new coordinated pilot program to crack down on scammers.
Investigators from the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and federal agents tailed Dr. Naveed Ahmad from his New Jersey home and nabbed him in Brooklyn during a traffic stop before he could get to his clinic in East New York.
He denies it but authorities say they have mountains of evidence that Ahmad enlisted recruiters or steerers to hang out in the office or the street, paying $300 to bogus patients with Medicaid cards to get expensive HiV-AiDs medications, which were then resold on the underground market.
Authorities say he ran the ring out of his unassuming office, which was raided about the same time he was getting cuffed on the side of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
"This is a multi-layered conspiracy," assistant DA Lauren Mack said.
The scam allegedly involved recruiters who hung out in the office or on the street, bringing in bogus patients. Authorities say the patients got prescriptions for expensive HIV/AIDS medications from the cooperating doctor that could be re-sold on the underground market.
"For the doctor, that's very lucrative," Mack said. "He gets a Medicaid-paying client to sit in his chair so he can bill Medicaid for whatever he wants."
That includes thousands of procedures the doctor allegedly never performed. Authorities have video of an undercover agent who was supposed to get a nasal scope.
"You see the doctor approach her with the scope and step back and say you're fine," Mack said. "For that, he billed $600, and he did not do it."
The doctor's case was front and center as the Brooklyn DA and other officials announced a new federally funded program to target medical providers who steal from the system.
"This kind of collaboration can yield a return of not millions, but billions of dollars if it's replicated across the country," Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said.
Dr. Ahmad has pleaded not guilty and is free on $750,000 bail.
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