New Jersey Doc Sentenced to Prison in Lab Referral Scheme

A New Jersey doctor was sentenced by a federal court in Newark, N.J., July 7 to two years in prison for taking bribes from a clinical testing laboratory as part of a long-running scheme operated by the lab, its president, and a number of associates, announced U.S. Attorney for the Central District of New Jersey Paul J. Fishman (United States v. Aponte, D.N.J., No. 13-cr-464-SRC). In addition to the prison term, Judge Stanley R. Chesler ordered physician Dennis Aponte to pay a $50,000 fine and forfeit $235,000. Aponte was one of three doctors who pleaded guilty in July 2013 to one count of bribery in violation of the Federal Travel Act for accepting tens of thousands of dollars from Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services LLC (BLS) of Parsippany, N.J., in return for sending their patients’ blood samples to BLS for testing. The doctors participated in what the government has alleged was a scheme in which BLS, through its owners and sales representatives, paid physicians millions of dollars between 2006 and 2013 for referrals. From October 2012 to March 2013, Aponte received about $3,000 a month in cash in return for blood specimens referred to BLS, according to federal prosecutors, who said the lab made more than $175,000 through testing on specimens referred by Aponte.