A Texas doctor on trial in Dallas on federal charges that he filled bogus prescriptions for thousands of patients he never met testified Wednesday that he was a victim, not a perpetrator, of medical fraud.
Dr. David M. Young of Fredericksburg told a jury in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr that he was led to believe the electronic prescriptions he filled for orthotic devices and genetic tests were based on legitimate examinations of patients by medical professionals, when in fact the “examinations” were being churned out en masse by fraudulent Florida companies purporting to engage in telemedicine services.
An earlier witness for the government testified that many of the patient charts were “pre-filled” by nonmedical employees of the Florida companies, an unscrupulous crew she described as including prostitutes, drug addicts and halfway-house residents.
“Do you feel like you trusted the wrong people?” Karen Cook of Dallas, one of Young’s defense attorneys, asked him.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
A June 2023 indictment of Young said Medicare was billed about $39.6 million for “false and fraudulent claims” by the companies with which he contracted. Of that amount, the indictment said Medicare paid about $13.9 million.
On cross-examination by Brynn Schiess of the U.S. Department of Justice’s fraud section in Dallas, Young acknowledged that he never spoke with any of the supposed nurses who were preparing the medical charts he reviewed, that he made no attempt to get in touch with any of them and that he had no contact information for them.
“Your job was to sign [the electronic prescription forms], right?” Schiess asked.
“My job was to review charts” and prescribe braces and drugs accordingly, Young replied.
Young’s trial on charges of conspiracy and making false statements relating to healthcare matters began May 14. Closing arguments are expected to take place by the end of this week.
Before Young took the stand, where he spent more than four hours Wednesday, his defense team called as a witness Steven Kahn, who ran some of the Florida companies Young worked with as a prescribing physician. Kahn testified via video from a federal prison in Fairton, New Jersey, where he’s serving an 11-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2021 in the Southern District of Florida to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud.
Kahn said he told Young and other physicians — falsely — that the medical charts they were paid to review had been prepared by nurses and that Kahn’s companies were in compliance with all medical regulations.
He said on cross-examination by Ethan Womble of the DOJ’s fraud section that he’d described Young as a “home run doctor” for the number of patient charts Young reviewed and the number of prescriptions Young wrote.
“He was good to me,” Kahn said. “We made a lot of money.”
In addition to Cook, Young is represented by S. Michael McColloch of Dallas, Michael E. Clark of the Houston office of Womble Bond Dickinson and Stephen Chahn Lee of Chicago.
The case number in the Northern District of Texas is 3:21-cr-00417