A Queens doctor was busted Tuesday for allegedly acting more like a dealer than a healer — taking money for prescriptions for painkillers without examining patients, officials said.
Anand Persaud, 44, who has offices in Jamaica, Queens, and Baldwin, L.I., was charged with illegally selling prescriptions for Oxycodone on two occasions. But investigators believe he made $1.4 million from 5,800 office visits in 2011 and 2012 in which he prescribed the addictive meds to patients, officials said.
“It’s unconscionable that a doctor, a trusted licensed professional, would violate his professional duties and abuse his license to traffic in prescriptions for narcotics,” said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose office conducted the investigation.
Persaud, born in Guyana and who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in a Nassau County court Tuesday and was ordered held without bail.
He allegedly charged $250 or more for office visits in which all he did was write prescriptions for the painkillers.
A new law set to take effect next month will make New York the first state to require doctors to consult an online database showing patients’ drug histories before prescribing a controlled substance. The law is designed to make “doctor shopping” by prescription drug abusers much more difficult, officials said.
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