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Eduard Shtindler, 36, carried out the bribery scheme for five years beginning in 2012. Schtindler, the owner of the shuttered Empire Pharmacy, sent employees to deliver the payments -- sometimes in the form of $100 bills stuffed into pill bottles -- to the Hudson County psychiatrist in exchange for steering patients to Empire.
Schintdler was heard on a recording referring to the scheme. “You think [the doctor]’s going to go to the FBI and rat himself out?”, he is heard on one recording, while on another, he said to an employee that “First off, I didn’t make you do it. I didn’t put a gun to your head. We all made money together."
Schtindler also engaged in a fraud in which the pharmacy would fill prescriptions for expensive medications that required prior authorization before reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers would be paid out. Schtindler, who launched this scheme in 2015, is heard on recordings describing how he and the pharmacy falsified prior authorizations in order to get the lucrative prescriptions.
As part of his plea agreement, Shtindler agreed to loss amounts between $1.5 million and $3.5 million for each of the charged conspiracies to which he pleaded guilty. He faces up to 15 years in prison when he's sentenced in March.
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