Metro Detroit Doctor Gets 7 Years In Prison For Selling Prescription Drugs To Street Dealers
WARREN (WWJ) -- A Warren doctor has been sentenced to 84 months in prison for illegally writing prescriptions for oxycodone and other medications.
Over a period of two years, 46-year-old Hussein Awada wrote prescriptions for 80,000 prescription medications for no medical reason in exchange for cash. Investigators say many of the pills were re-sold to street dealers.
Awada had already admitted that he defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross about $2.3 million dollars. He was arraigned in 2013 along with another doctor, Dr. Luis Collazo.
Awada and Collazo also apparently committed health care fraud by billing for unnecessary office visits, submitting patients brought by recruiters to medically unnecessary testing and procedures — including x-rays, nuclear cardiac stress tests, electrocardiograms, blood work, and injections — and by causing Medicare and other insurance programs to pay for unnecessary controlled substances.