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Eduard “Eddy” Shtindler, 36, also produced bogus documents that generated even more income, raking in nearly $5 million in illegal proceeds through both schemes combined, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said in announcing his arrest by the FBI.
Federal agents raided Shtindler’s since-closed Empire Pharmacy on Bergenline Avenue in West New York in August 2017 (see video above).
Beginning in 2015, Carpenito said, Empire began directing employees, including two pharmacists, to “repeatedly falsify prior authorization forms for medications for various conditions, including psoriasis and Hepatitis C.”
The FBI secretly recorded Shtindler admitting to the practice, which brought in $2 million in reimbursement payments from Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurance carriers that he otherwise wouldn’t have received, the U.S. attorney said.
Federal agents also recorded Schtindler admitting that he bribed a Hudson County psychiatrist to send prescriptions to Empire from 2012 through early 2017, Carpenito said.
In some cases, he said, Shtindler stuffed bribes in $100 denominations in pill bottles and had employees deliver them to the doctor.
The doctor steered patients to Empire in return, even though they used other pharmacies closer to their homes for all of their other prescriptions.
“You think [the doctor]’s going to go to the FBI and rat himself out?” Shtindler tells a former employee in one of the secretly-recorded conversations, Carpenito said.
In another, he said, Shtindler is heard telling the former employee: “First off, I didn’t make you do it. I didn’t put a gun to your head. We all made money together.”
Empire dispensed approximately $3 million in medications prescribed by the psychiatrist, Carpenito said.
Shtindler, who lives in a $1.3 million home on Cumberland Court, was due for a first appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Newark.
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