Drug Litigation Newsroom

Amagansett Doctor Charged In Presciption Drug Trafficking Scam

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced that an Amagansett physician has been charged with writing hundreds of illegal prescriptions for patients from the Bronx and Manhattan, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in medically unnecessary Medicaid billings.

The doctor, Michael Chait, M.D., 46, wrote prescriptions that put huge quantities of highly addictive and dangerous painkillers worth millions of dollars on the black market. Chait was arrested for unlawfully selling unnecessary narcotic prescriptions – including OxyContin, a synthetic form of morphine, and Dilaudid – to Medicaid recipients who traveled from New York City to his practice in the Town of East Hampton on the eastern end of Long Island.

Between January 1 and March 7, 2007, Chait saw up to 50 patients per day, many of whom were Medicaid recipients from New York City who were driven to his office to pay cash for the prescriptions. Once purchased, patients would return and use their Medicaid cards to obtain the controlled medications from pharmacies in the Bronx and Manhattan.

“This was a case of physician-assisted drug dealing. A doctor-turned-dealer poisoning our citizens for profit and violating that most basic of medical oaths: do no harm,” Attorney General Cuomo said. “There couldn’t be a more reprehensible abuse of Medicaid than using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the black market for prescription drugs.”

Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge John P. Gilbride said, “Throughout the five boroughs of New York City and Long Island, this individual was the ultimate stop for ‘doctor shoppers.’ Hundreds of fraudulent prescriptions were written that were not based on medical evaluations. With the escalation of pharmaceutical drug abuse, it is the DEA’s responsibility to monitor prescriptions and ensure that legitimate pharmaceuticals are not diverted for illegitimate abuse.”