Airport Doctor From Long Island Charged With Selling Illegal Oxycodone Prescriptions

Image via Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York

A senior aviation medical examiner at JFK International Airport who lives in New Hyde Park was arrested Thursday for selling oxycodone prescriptions to people with no legitimate medical need in exchange for cash, law enforcement officials said.

Dr. Gerald Surya, an internist and senior aviation medical examiner with offices at JFK and in Valley Stream, would sell multiple prescriptions written in different names during an office visit with a single patient, officials said. Some of the patients were reportedly not present at the time the prescriptions was written.

Surya allegedly sold 26 illegal prescriptions during nine office visits between Nov. 2014 to Aug. 2015.

These sales took place at the JFK Medport location and at Sun Medical Care of Nassau in Valley Stream.

He wrote prescriptions for oxycodone for more than half of his prescribing history for controlled substances from January 2012 to August 2015, according to a court authorized review of his prescribing history. The review also showed he wrote prescriptions for Xanax, Vicodin, Percocet and other medications.

Surya charged his patients $60 cash for the illegal prescriptions and raised the price to $100 per prescription in July 2014 after investigators held a court authorized search of his JFK Medport office, officials said.

After a long-term investigation, authorities conducted a court authorized search of Surya’s home and offices and seized medical records, financial documents and computer equipment.

He is charged with 26 counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance.

“By selling prescriptions for addictive drugs, Dr. Surya is charged with jeopardizing the health and well-being of his patients and the general public in order to line his own pockets,” NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said in a statement. “Physicians who abuse their privilege to write prescriptions and funnel many thousands of potentially dangerous pills onto the black market deserve to be prosecuted as the drug dealers they are.”

Surya was arraigned Thursday afternoon in Manhattan.