New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that former pharmacy owner Aftab Hussain has been sentenced to two to six years in prison for stealing over $11.5 million dollars through a Medicaid fraud scheme that preyed on low-income HIV patients who needed life-saving medications. Hussain and his associates paid illegal kickbacks to patients to ensure these patients would use over 20 pharmacies they owned across New York City and Westchester County, and then filled their prescriptions with unsafe medications illegally purchased from the black market or other pharmacy patients. Hussain and his associates billed Medicaid a total of over $11.5 million for these illegally obtained drugs over the course of their years-long scheme. Hussain was the last defendant to be sentenced in an investigation that included the arrest and conviction of five individual defendants along with two pharmacies located throughout New York City.
Hussain and his co-conspirators would often offer to buy back the HIV medication from the Medicaid recipients for cash at the time of delivery, usually offering $100 to $200 per bottle even though the wholesale price of the medications was usually between $2,000 and $3,000 per bottle. As a result of these dangerous inducements, many vulnerable patients went without their medication, putting them at severe risk of developing life-threatening complications from HIV. Hussain and his co-conspirators also purchased large quantities of HIV medications through black market channels, often drugs obtained through other illegal kickbacks, and dispensed those prescription medications to unsuspecting recipients. Hussain and his co-conspirators submitted claims for reimbursement to the Medicaid program as if the medications they were disbursing had been purchased honestly and distributed safely.
