CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A Chesapeake obstetrician-gynecologist accused of performing unnecessary surgeries on patients as part of a health care fraud scheme is facing new criminal charges, according to a federal indictment filed against him last Friday.
On Wednesday, Perwaiz not guilty to the charges. Perwaiz had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, but hadn’t had the opportunity to do with the new allegations listed in Friday’s federal indictment. His trial was scheduled for June, but was pushed back because of coronavirus.
The indictment was filed against Dr. Javaid Perwaiz in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Perwaiz was arrested in November 2019, and since that time has had three indictments filed against him. Each time new charges have been added — and now he is accused of more than 60 crimes.
This indictment adds 52 additional charges to the 11 he faced when the second indictment was filed in December 2019.
The new indictment charges Perwaiz with the following crimes:
- 1 count of healthcare fraud — criminal forfeiture
- 25 counts of health care fraud
- 33 counts of making false statements related to health care matters
- 3 counts of aggravated identity theft
Prosecutors believe that Perwaiz committed these crimes over the course of about 10 years. They believe Perwaiz made money by submitting false insurance claims for procedures that weren’t medically necessary, and that he justified the procedures by falsifying patient statements and diagnoses. Prosecutors also accuse Perwaiz of altering sterilization consent forms, and in some cases, allegedly filing insurance claims for procedures that weren’t done at all, according to court documents.
Prosecutors believe one way Perwaiz made money was by routinely scheduling patients for early labor inductions, court documents state.
Perwaiz allegedly scheduled patients for early labor inductions to make sure that their babies were delivered on days that he was already in the hospital so he could file insurance claims for the deliveries. Perwaiz allegedly changed the “estimated delivery dates” on some of his patients’ medical records and induced them before their 39th week of pregnancy, which is against the medical standard of care, according to court documents.
Perwaiz billed Medicaid and Tricare for 84 deliveries in 2019. Prosecutors believe that at least 33 percent of those births were early induced labors.
Perwaiz also “aggressively encouraged” women to consent to procedures by telling them they had cancer or would develop cancer if they didn’t have surgery. He justified the procedures and surgeries to insurance companies by falsifying patients’ medical records to include statements they didn’t make and symptoms they didn’t have. These surgeries were sometimes irreversible, like hysterectomies, court documents state.
Perwaiz also allegedly billed insurance companies for diagnostic procedures he didn’t actually do, like hysteroscopies and colposcopies. Although these procedures weren’t actually done, Perwaiz used his alleged findings to justify other medical procedures and surgeries, court documents state.
Prosecutors believe that Perwaiz billed for more than $2.3 million in gynecological procedures and surgeries based, at least in part, on the findings of diagnostic procedures that were never done, according to court documents.
These surgeries and procedures included hysterectomies, dilation and currettages, and lysis of adhesions, court documents state.
Perwaiz is also accused of pressuring his patients to go through with permanent sterilization procedures, often by lying to them and saying that the procedures were easily reversible. Sometimes he circumvented Medicaid’s 30-day sterilization consent requirement by backdating consent forms so they appeared to have been signed earlier than they were, court documents state.
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Clarification: The original version of this story incorrectly stated the number of counts of aggravated identity theft that Perwaiz was charged with. This number was based on court records. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice clarified, saying that a grand jury only issued three counts of aggravated identity theft against Perwaiz.