NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — In two weeks, a Chesapeake OB-GYN convicted of health care fraud will find out how long he will be in prison.
Dr. Javaid Perwaiz, who had a 40-year-career as an OB-GYN, was found guilty by a federal jury in November for health care fraud. He faces 465 years behind bars. Perwaiz now knows how much money he will have to give back to the federal government — and it totals more than $2.2 million.
The pain that Perwaiz caused is much deeper than any amount of money.
Perwaiz was making fake medical diagnoses and doing unnecessary surgeries on women to line his own pockets. He made nearly $7 million in the last seven years, much of that was off bogus insurance claims.
“It’s disgusting, it really is,” said former patient Shannon Cohen. “He’s never been married, he doesn’t have children, and all of this was for the sake of just benefiting his lifestyle.”
“I just think that it is absolutely disgusting,” added former patient Anita Fuller. “It’s disgusting what a doctor that he took an oath to help people and save people and then steals from insurance companies.”
According to court documents, Perwaiz has agreed to back $2,276,000. He also will turn over his million-dollar home, his Churchland Boulevard office and everything it, $90,000 from the sale of his second office and his two shares in Bon Secours Surgery Center at Harbor View.
Perwaiz is also turning over several bank accounts, his Bentley and a Mercedes Roadster. He will be sentenced May 18.
“It looks like they are going to do a job on him,” said local attorney Andy Protogyrou. “By the time he is done, I don’t know what there is going to be left.”
Some of the patients have filed civil suits against the doctor, but Protogyrou believes this money will go to the victims in this case, the insurance companies.
“If the insurance companies were out monies, they paid that shouldn’t have been paid or for surgeries that shouldn’t have been done those are the companies that would be reimbursed,” Protogyrou added.
We spent a year investigating what Perwaiz was doing as part of our 10-part series “The Patients v. Perwaiz.“
