The attorney representing an Anchorage doctor at the center of a million dollar Medicaid fraud case says state prosecutors are going after the wrong man.
Ron Offret says a former employee of Dr. Shubhranjan Ghosh did all of the fraudulent billing to Medicaid.
“Doctor Ghosh did not know that these were being submitted and that will be our test at trial, to show that he did not know that,” Offret said.
State prosecutors say Ghosh fraudulently billed Medicaid for more than $1.1 million and also wrote illegal scripts for controlled substances.
In the original charging documents, a whistleblower alleges that both that employee and Ghosh had been submitting false billings to Medicaid for years.
Offret says he hasn’t been shown any evidence or audits that prove his client fraudulently billed Medicaid over $1 million.
Offret, who’s practiced law in Alaska since the 1970s, says Ghosh was a respected child psychiatrist whose reputation is being tainted by the allegations of Medicaid fraud and writing illegal scripts.
“As soon as these allegations came out, especially the comments that were made at the early bail hearings which tried to say he was a drug addict, it was devastating,” Offret said. “Mothers pulled their children out of counseling, he probably lost 60 to 70 percent of his patients.”
Offret says the former employee may have been let off the hook and had charges against him dismissed in exchange for helping to build a case against Ghosh.
“They have an agreement with him that he’ll come in and testify against Doctor Ghosh and that’s part of the reason why they dropped the charges against him,” Offret said.
The trial is set for October.