Lincolnwood Man Sentenced To Over 6 Years For Opioid Conspiracy

CHICAGO — A Lincolnwood man who admitted conspiring with a doctor to illegal sell opioids was sentenced Thursday to more than six years in federal prison. The former owner of a clinic in Chicago and the doctor he worked with knew the people they were providing with prescriptions for oxycodone, hydrocodone and other powerful pharmaceuticals had no legitimate medical need for the drugs, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago.

Mohammed Shariff, 68, owned the Midtown Medical Center in the Uptown neighborhoods until it was raided by federal agents and shut down in March 2013.

Shariff was charged in July 2016 and pleaded guilty in December 2018 one count of conspiracy to knowingly dispense controlled substance outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.

His co-conspirator, Theodore Galvani of Spring Grove, has pleaded guilty separately to drug conspiracy charges. He is still awaiting sentencing, according to prosecutors.

According to Shariff's plea agreement, people paid between $100 and $200 in cash to get the illegal prescriptions. In cases where his clients were covered by Medicare, Shariff and Galvani filled out false claims to get reimbursed for bogus office visits. Shariff would organize crews of people to go to Galvani for opioid prescriptions. The doctor would meet with more than 70 patients a day, sometimes in groups, they admitted.

“[Shariff] chose to make his living in a vitally important industry,” argued Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Flanagan in a sentencing memorandum. “Rather than devote himself to people in need of fundamental care, however, he showed an abject disregard of patients and perverted his companies into engines of unlawful profit.”

The pair made more than $584,000 through the scheme between February 2012 and March 2013. During that time, they were responsible for prescribing more than two kilograms of oxycodone, more than 595,000 hydrocodone pills and more than 190,000 Xanax pills to people who had no "legitimate medical need," according to the plea.

When police and agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency raided the clinic more than six years ago, people who worked nearby described often seeing long lines in the morning and out-of-state license plates, DNAinfo reported in 2013. The area's alderman told WBBM-TV he had been offered a drug deal when he visited the packed clinic. He recorded a video in 2012 showing crowds lined up outside the clinic, and testified at Shariff's trial before it ended in a hung jury.

“This announcement sends a clear message to the medical professionals who exploit their power, prey on the vulnerable, and violate controlled substance laws: you will be investigated and held accountable to the fullest extent," said Brian McKnight, chief of the DEA's Chicago office, announcing Shariff's sentence.

In addition to the opioid prescription conspiracy, Shariff also admitted trying to carry out a Medicare fraud scheme involving Home Health Resource LLC, an Elgin-based home health care company he owned.

In a surreptitiously recorded May 2016 meeting in Chicago with a doctor who was already cooperating with law enforcement, Shariff offered to pay $500 every time the physician certified someone on Medicare as eligible for home health care and referred them to his business.

"Tell the patient you are homebound," Shariff told the cooperating witness he would instruct nurses at his company. "When the doctor come, don’t say that you go out and drive and this and that. 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 himself will be homebound for 75 months at his new residence in a federal penitentiary under the sentence handed down by Judge Harry Leinenweber on May 30.

Earlier: Lincolnwood Man Pleads Guilty To Opiate Prescription Conspiracy