Defense says doctor tainted colleagues

For Pulmonary Associates, a team of 14 lung specialists with six locations in Las Vegas, getting dragged into an undercover FBI investigation of a medical equipment supplier wasn't part of the business plan.

But the medical group and its founder and president, Dr. Paul Stewart, have come under what defense lawyers say is an undeserved cloud of suspicion as more light is shed on the undercover activities of one of the group's doctors, Robert Lampert.

Last week, lawyers for Anil Mathur, the medical equipment supplier indicted in the investigation, broke Lampert's FBI cover in court papers seeking to dismiss the case.

Mathur is charged with providing $26,150 in kickbacks to Lampert to obtain Medicare business. Mathur sold oxygen supplies.

In new court papers filed late Tuesday, Mathur's defense team suggested that Lampert unsuccessfully tried to implicate "nearly every physician," including Stewart, at Pulmonary Associates during the two-year undercover investigation of Mathur.

No one other than Mathur, who denies wrongdoing, has been charged .

Lampert's claim that Stewart, "a highly respected physician," could be bribed is "patently outrageous and potentially defamatory," the defense lawyers wrote.

The latest revelations, based on FBI reports turned over to the defense, raise "troubling questions" about whether the government "allowed itself to be manipulated" by Lampert, the lawyers argued.

In one FBI excerpt from December 2008, Lampert is quoted as telling agents that he believes Stewart "may take money" from Mathur's company, United Medical Supplies (UMS). Lampert indicated that another member of the medical practice, Dr. Suresh Khilnani, would not take money but might accept gifts. And Lampert told the FBI that Mathur was "friendly" with two other physicians at the practice.

In their latest motion, the defense lawyers also alleged that Lampert tried to steer Mathur into bribing another colleague, Dr. James Christensen, but that Mathur declined to do it.

Attorneys Jacob Hafter, Paul Padda, Ruth Cohen and Robert Draskovich said Lampert's claims appear to be "false and devoid of any factual support." The Nevada U.S. attorney's office has an obligation to issue a news release rejecting his "slanderous remarks" to the FBI, they wrote.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden declined to comment, saying his office is prohibited from publicly discussing a pending case in federal court. Prosecutors will get a chance to respond in writing to the defense lawyers.

Neither Lampert nor Stewart returned phone calls.

But Harold Gewerter, a lawyer for Pulmonary Associates, said Stewart and the other doctors at the medical practice did nothing wrong and have no knowledge of the undercover investigation.

"Nobody else from Pulmonary Associates was offered any money or took any money from Mr. Mathur," Gewerter said. "These are a bunch of honest, hardworking and excellent doctors."

The defense lawyers in their court papers are seeking a dismissal of the case against Mathur, alleging Lampert may have destroyed a key piece of evidence favorable to the medical supplier's defense.

Last week, in a separate dismissal motion, the lawyers accused prosecutors of broadly interpreting the federal anti-kickback law to bring a case against Mathur that will have a chilling effect on the entire health care profession.

"Sadly, what the government is now selectively choosing to characterize as 'inducement' was in fact little more than a business relationship in which, at least in Mr. Mathur's mind, Dr. Lampert would simply promote and speak favorably to others about UMS in the hopes that those individuals might refer patients to UMS," the lawyers wrote.

"Asking another person to promote one's business to others, and possibly offering remuneration for doing so, cannot be a crime under the anti-kickback statute. If it were, the FBI would be storming the marketing department of every pharmaceutical and orthopedic supply company."

Federal prosecutors have told defense lawyers that Lampert wore a wire for the FBI in the Mathur investigation from February 2009 until January 2011. Lampert secretly began recording Mathur after Mathur gave the doctor $5,000 in cash in December 2008 to steer business to United Medical Supplies, prosecutors alleged.

Mathur faces nine counts of "offering and paying remuneration" under the anti-kickback statute. He is charged with making nine payments, varying from $1,500 to $5,150, to Lampert during the two-year period.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135.