Doctor working as FBI informant reportedly wearing a wire since 2008

Call him a mystery man for the moment.

He is an unidentified Las Vegas physician who ran around town wearing a wire for the FBI the past four years.

His task was to record conversations with health care professionals as part of an undercover FBI investigation.

That is the word from defense lawyers in court papers filed late last week in a criminal case against a medical supplier charged with providing $26,150 in kickbacks to the doctor from December 2008 to December 2010.

In August, Anil Mathur, owner of United Medical Supplies, was indicted on nine counts of "offering and paying remuneration" under the federal anti-kickback statute to the physician to steer Medicare business his way. Mathur provided oxygen supplies to the physician's patients.

The doctor was not identified in the indictment, and Mathur's defense lawyers, Paul Padda and Robert Draskovich, who apparently have been told the doctor's identity, did not name him in their court papers.

The lawyers would not publicly disclose his name when pressed in interviews.

Padda and Draskovich described the physician in their court papers as "an informant for the government" who had developed a three-year friendship with Mathur starting in 2009.

The lawyers said the prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Crane Pomerantz, disclosed at a Jan. 19 hearing that the confidential informant was secretly recording conversations as far back as January 2008, a year before he had befriended Mathur.

"The import of this information is that the (confidential informant) physician has been wearing a wire for the government and recording conversations with individuals other than Mr. Mathur since January 2008," the lawyers wrote.

Padda and Draskovich suggested in a footnote that the other individuals could be "doctors or health care executives."

"Presumably," the lawyers added, "prior to developing a friendship with Mr. Mathur, the (confidential informant) received instruction from the government regarding who to tape, what to say, what type of information to elicit, techniques for eliciting information and desirable targets for prosecution by the government.

"Logic would dictate everything the (confidential informant) did from the beginning of his involvement with the government was subject to the direction, control and approval of the government."

In their court papers, the lawyers are seeking to overturn a magistrate's order denying the defense additional evidence it requested from the government, including information about the activities of the unidentified physician.

Pomerantz turned over 425 pages of documents and 17 recordings to Mathur's lawyers but has indicated he has nothing more of relevance to the case to give the defense.

Padda and Draskovich, however, disagreed with the prosecutor's position in their court papers. They argued that the case hinges on the jury's impressions of Mathur's relationship with the confidential FBI informant.

"These impressions will be impacted by information pertaining to the (confidential informant's) taping of others, information supplied to the government by the (confidential informant) regarding others and other surreptitious tape recordings that shed light on the manner in which the government conducted its investigation and reasons regarding whom to target and why," they said.

Information about other potential FBI targets the physician sought out "could reveal the (confidential informant's) motivations for wearing a wire for a four-year period -- an odd and unusual event for a physician," the defense lawyers said.

The FBI on Tuesday would not identify the physician or confirm or deny the physician was a confidential informant. The U.S. attorney's office declined comment.

In his indictment, Mathur is charged with paying the physician on nine separate occasions over the two-year period ending in December 2010. The amounts paid each time varied from $1,500 to $5,150, the indictment said.

"The purpose of the anti-kickback statute is to ensure that the medical referral decision is made with the patient's best interest in mind," the indictment said.

The statute, the indictment added, also is designed to "prevent inflation of the cost of medical treatment by the payment of referral fees" and prevent "the referral of patients for care that they do not need."

The government is also seeking to force Mathur to forfeit more than $20,000 to the government.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135.