Orange County resident Aatif Khan, of Newburgh, will be sentenced on Tuesday, Oct. 27, for selling strips that he obtained at JNR Pharmacy in Brewster throughout the country.
In addition to the felony charge of second-degree grand larceny, which can be punished by a maximum of 15 years in prison, Khan was slapped with a fourth-degree criminal tax fraud charge, as he failed to report any of his stolen income. In total, Khan could face up to 19 years in prison.
“Gathering the evidence needed to secure this conviction was challenging and it required locating witnesses from across the country -- but (Criminal Investigator Michael Benvie), and (Assistant District Attorney Nicholas LaStella) were simply relentless in their pursuit of justice and they put together an overwhelming case against Aatif Khan,” said Putnam County District Attorney Robert Tendy in a statement released on Friday, Aug. 28.
Khan, then 32, was arrested by the Sheriff's Department Bureau of Criminal Investigations on Feb. 28, 2019. The theft reportedly came to light after the pharmacy's bookkeeper conducted an inventory of the store.
According to Tendy, this is the largest asset forfeiture case handled in the history of the Putnam County District Attorney's office.
“The victim has been reimbursed for the loss his business suffered, and Mr. Khan has paid back all of the proceeds of this crime, and then some," wrote Tendy. "In addition to the asset forfeiture we collected, he is on the hook for a significant sum of money in the form of unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest owed to the State of New York Department of Taxation and Finance for his felony tax fraud conviction.”
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