LI pharmacist charged in prescription drug scam, authorities say

A pharmacist from Old Westbury was charged in federal court in Manhattan on Monday with a $9 million scheme to rip off Medicare and Medicaid by billing the federal programs for prescriptions that she never filled.

Sunita Kumar, 54, who controlled two pharmacies in Brooklyn with her husband, allegedly billed for thousands of prescriptions that records showed she never bought drugs to fill — billing for 29,108 units of the blood thinner Clopidogrel, for example, while purchasing zero units, according to court papers.

A criminal complaint in the case also said that an undercover agent posing as a Medicaid recipient recorded conversations in which he agreed to leave his prescriptions unfilled if Kumar kicked back a share of the amount she was going to bill the federal government.

A lawyer for Kumar, Jeffrey Granat, said she didn’t want to try the case in the press, but “after all is said and done, she is confident that her position will be vindicated.” He said no action has been taken against her license.