Lincolnwood Man Pleads Guilty To Opiate Prescription Conspiracy

CHICAGO — A Lincolnwood man pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to sell prescriptions for opiates to people without a legitimate reason for the drugs.

Mohammed Shariff, 68, is the former owner of Midtown Medical Center and its pharmacy in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. According to the terms of his plea agreement, he conspired with a doctor there, Theodore Galvani, to prescribe large quantities of powerful drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone and alprazolam with no physical exam or medical tests.

Galvani met with more than 70 patients a day and sometimes saw groups of two or more people at the same time. Shariff organized crews of people to meet with the doctor to get prescriptions for opiates, according to the plea agreement.

People paid $100 to $200 in cash to the two men in exchange for the illegal prescriptions. Shariff and Galvani also submitted false claims to Medicare, getting reimbursed for at least $584,188 from February 2012 to March 2013 alone, it said.

Shariff pocketed more than $292,000 of that money, he admitted. The conspiracy was responsible for the illegal prescription of more than 2 kilograms of oxycodone, nearly 600,000 hydrocodone pills and more than 190,000 alprazolam pills, commonly known as Xanax.

Shariff admitted in his plea agreement that he attempted to carry out a separate fraud scheme involving the Elgin-based home health care company he owned, Home Health Resource. He offered a $500 kickback to another doctor for each time the doctor certified a Medicare beneficiary as eligible for home health care and referred the patient to the company. At the time of the May 2016 meeting, the physician was already cooperating with law enforcement and the conversation was being recorded, according to federal prosecutors.

Nurses at Shariff's company were instructed to tell patients they were unable to leave the house in order to hide the fact they were not actually eligible for reimbursement for home health care services.

“When the doctor come, don’t say that you go out and drive and this and that," Shariff said, according to prosecutors. "Don’t tell anybody you drive, don’t tell anybody you’re taking the bus, even going to the groceries. If anybody asks, ‘I stay home. I’m homebound.’”

Shariff faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1 million after negotiating a plea to a single count of conspiracy to knowingly dispense controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.

He was originally indicted in July 2016 on the one count to which he pleaded guilty as well as one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, eight counts of knowingly and intentionally dispensing oxycodone outside the course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose and six counts of dispensing hydrocodone outside the course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose – charges that could have carried a combined maximum sentence of more than 200 years.

Shariff, who is being represented by attorney Ralph Meczyk in the case, has a sentencing hearing set for March 19, 2019.

Galvani, of Spring Grove, has already pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges and awaits sentencing.