Surender Gorukanti faces 5 years in prison, $250,000 in fines.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A Brooklyn-based doctor, Surender Gorukanti, 46, has pleaded guilty to charges of accepting bribes for fraudulently referring his patients to certain clinics.
Gorukanti admitted that he accepted checks totaling $14,000, in a New York court earlier this week. According to court documents, Gorukanti would see patients, and would then recommend them to BLS, which would analyze the patients’ blood specimens. Each check that Gorukanti received from BLS was for $1,000.
He pleaded guilty to a single charge of accepting bribes, which could now land him as much as five years in prison, and up to $250,000 in fines, as well as reimbursement of the amount he received from the bribes.
Gorukanti is a family practitioner, based in Staten Island, New York. He has affiliations with the Staten Island University Hospital North and Maimonides Medical Center, and has 11 years of experience and practices in Family Medicine, General Practice, and Pediatrics, according to Vitals.com, a physician ratings site.
He is the latest person to be involved in the scheme, which so far has involved at least 25 people, 14 of which are physicians. According to the Department of Justice, the scheme involved more than $100 million in payments to Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services LLC (BLS), in Parsippany, New York, from Medicare and other private insurance companies.
So far, only $7 million of the total amount has been re-claimed by the government. The case has been filed in Newark, New Jersey. Gorukanti’s sentencing is currently scheduled for June 16 of this year.