Connecticut psychiatrist Naimetulla Syed has agreed to stop practicing medicine and will pay more than $455,000 to settle accusations of healthcare fraud.
Syed, who had offices in New Haven and Danbury where he was the sole practitioner, allegedly issued medically unnecessary prescriptions, including ones for controlled substances, from 2016 to 2021. These purportedly false claims were submitted to Medicaid and Medicare by Cornerstone Pharmacy, Inc., acting under the name “Whalley Drug,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office. Syed also billed Medicaid and Medicare for medically unnecessary visits related to these prescriptions.
The allegations go further: Syed supposedly wrote prescriptions for unsafe amounts of benzodiazepines. He was investigated for prescribing them to people who showed “red flags of abuse, addiction, or diversion,” including to patients who received the high-risk combination of an opioid, benzodiazepine and a muscle relaxant—what the Attorney General’s Office describes as a dangerous “holy trinity.” Syed is accused of giving one patient a synthetic opioid while this person was receiving oxycodone and hydrocodone from other providers…