Bay Area Indian Doctor Venkat Aachi Sentenced to Prison for Health Care Fraud
October 21, 2019 - Bay Area Indian Doctor Venkat Aachi (52) was sentenced today to two years in prison for unlawfully distributing Hydrocodone and committing health care fraud.
Dr. Venkat Aachi was indicted by a federal grand jury in October, 2018 and charged him with six counts of distributing drugs outside the scope of professional practice, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C), and one count of health care fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1347.
Saratoga, CA resident Dr. Venkat Aachi pleaded guilty March 25, 2019 to one count under each statute.
According to the plea agreement & court filings submitted:
Aachi was a licensed physician who operated a pain clinic in San Jose and maintained a DEA registration number authorizing him to prescribe controlled substances.In addition to the prison term, Bay area Indian Doctor Venkat Aachi was ordered to serve 3 years of supervised release and pay $82,616.85 in restitution.
Aachi admitted that from September 18, 2017, through July 2, 2018, he wrote hydrocodone-acetaminophen prescriptions that were outside the scope of his professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.
...in November of 2017, he wrote a prescription enabling a patient to receive 90 hydrocodone-acetaminophen pills. Aachi did not conduct a physical examination of the patient nor discuss the patient’s pain or response to prior medication. Aachi acknowledged that he knew the prescriptions were not for a legitimate medical purpose and that he did not write the prescriptions in the usual course of his professional practice.
Aachi also admitted that on July 2, 2018, he falsely submitted to an insurance company a false and fraudulent claim for payment for healthcare benefits, items, and services. Aachi admitted he acted with the intend to defraud the insurance company.
...over the course of just one year, Aachi wrote 5,992 prescriptions for controlled substances, the majority of which were for narcotics.
Further, from September 2017, to July 2018, four undercover law enforcement agents posed as new patients. They visited Aachi about four times each, and after each visit, they received a prescription for a schedule II controlled substance with little to no physical examination.
The court ordered Dr. Venkat Aachi to begin serving his sentence on January 22, 2020.