Syed Jaffery has been sued by the state for accepting the money - just a few months after he was indicted for the same offense.
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP - A neurologist who has been arrested twice in the past for sexual assault and fraud, is now being sued by the state for accepting thousands of dollars in kickbacks, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Syed Jaffery of Egg Harbor Township. (New Jersey Attorney General's Office) The lawsuit was filed by the state in Mercer County Superior Court last week and named Syed Jaffery, his wife Kaniz Jaffery and Mask Realities - a company the couple owns - as defendants.
Jaffery, 54, a neurologist who, with his wife, owned Premier Neurology in Egg Harbor Township, started a scheme in 2010 in which the couple agreed to refer patients to specific diagnostic imaging centers in both north and south New Jersey, the suit said. The centers were run by Rehan Zuberi and Rohit Gupta who agreed to pay Jaffery $4,000 a month in return for his referrals, the suit said. That number was later increased to $5,000 and the money was always paid to the couple's business, Mask Realities.
Accepting a kickback - referring business in exchange for profit - is prohibited by federal law.
Zuberi and Gupta were listed in the lawsuit but were not named as defendants. They were later arrested for a similar large-scale scheme to give kickbacks to multiple doctors around the state.
In total, Jaffery received around $200,000 in kickbacks, the suit said.
In turn, the doctor started referring many more patients to imaging centers - nearly three times as many as he had referred before beginning the scheme in 2010, the suit said.
Between 2010 and 2013 he had referred nearly 1,350 patients.
The lawsuit tops off just over a year of arrests, indictments and accusations made against the doctor.
In September, Jaffery was indicted on second-degree counts of fraud, bribery and money laundering and third-degree running, for the scheme, the Attorney General's Office said in a release.
Less than a year before the fraud and bribery charges, Jaffery was led out of his office in handcuffs for another reason. Women came forward in 2014 and said the doctor had inappropriately touched them while they were patients in his office.
Police launched a three-month investigation into the accusations and arrested Jaffery in Dec. 2014.
A representative from the Attorney General's Office was not available for comment on the fraud suit Wednesday.
Anna Merriman may be reached at amerriman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @anna_merriman Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.
