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Then things went sideways.
For more than five years, state authorities said, Grinberg forged other doctors’ names on nearly 70 prescriptions for oxycodone, Adderall, Xanax, Cialis and a bunch of other drugs – apparently all for himself.
The crimes came to light in March 2021, they said, when a Walgreens in Vauxhall notified a New Jersey doctor about a dozen scripts he purportedly wrote for Grinberg, 39.
Most were for Percocet, they said.
The doctor told him he didn’t write or verbally authorize the prescriptions, an investigator with the Office of the New Jersey Insurance Fraud Prosecutor’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit reported in a complaint on file in Trenton.
A 13th script submitted by Grinberg bore the forged handwriting of a former colleague who’d been a resident with him at Beth Israel, it says.
Grinberg -- formerly or West Orange and most recently of Weehawken -- was "never his patient,” Acting NJ Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor wrote in a joint release. “He never wrote prescriptions for Grinberg.
“The doctor also confirmed that the signature on the prescription was not his.”
Altogether, Grinberg got 69 fraudulent prescriptions filled, some of which were paid for through his benefits plan, they said.
The future held promise after the 6-foot-4-inch red-headed internist met his future wife on JDate. They were married in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa in 2008, she wrote on 100hookup.com (SEE: Success Stories: Robyn and Sagy).
According to his online resume, Grinberg was a student researcher and emergency room volunteer in Florida before graduating cum laude from St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada in 2016.
He went from there to the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Beth Israel in Newark until 2019, when he took an infectious disease fellowship there.
Grinberg wrote that he was affiliated with Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center and “cooperate[d] with many other doctors and specialists without joining any medical groups.”
He left Beth Israel last June amid the growing investigation, records show.
Grinberg was arrested on Friday, April 8, and charged with forgery, health care claims fraud and separate individual counts of fraudulently obtaining oxy, Xanax, amphetamine, Adderall and promethazine/codeine.
He remained free pending court action.
Detective Regina Strugala was the lead investigator on the case for the Office of the New Jersey Insurance Fraud Prosecutor’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, Platkin said. Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Krayn is prosecuting the case, he said.
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