Acting United States Attorney April M. Leon announced that Samrat Mukherjee, 35, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana pleaded guilty to false statements relating to healthcare matters. Mukherjee’s conviction is punishable by a term of imprisonment of five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater, and a term of supervised release of three years. According to admissions made as a part of his guilty plea, Mukherjee was a licensed paramedic who worked for Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc. Mukherjee did not attend or graduate from medical school. However, he admitted that while employed by Acadian Ambulance he falsely held himself out to co-workers and friends as a licensed medical doctor. In order to perpetuate his lies, Mukherjee created a fake medical degree, fake residency match letter, and attended a celebration for his medical school graduation, despite having never attended medical school.
By falsely holding himself out as a medical doctor, Mukherjee was given physician access privileges at several hospitals where he spent time seeing patients in the intensive care unit, among other areas of the hospital. Mukherjee wore “MD” and “Flight Surgeon” insignia on his clothing and was given badges from area hospitals and Acadian Ambulance identifying him as a physician. From in or around May 2019, and continuing through in or around November 2022, Mukherjee called in prescriptions to various pharmacies for himself and others. In doing so, he falsely and fraudulently claimed to be two doctors and had authority to write the prescriptions. Mukherjee caused the pharmacies to submit claims to healthcare benefit programs, including Medicaid and BCBSLA, for reimbursement.
