A Massachusetts physician has been convicted for his involvement in an international money laundering scheme involving importing illegal and misbranded drugs.
From January 2008 through January 2018, Lexington-based psychiatrist Rahim Shafa, MD, 66, was a part of a scheme where he purchased naltrexone pellet implants and disulfiram pellet implants and injections from Hong Kong, according to a Feb. 9 news release. While these drugs are approved by the FDA for alcohol and opioid dependence treatment, the pellet form of these substances are not.
Dr. Shafa falsified documents to conceal the packages containing the drugs —- including declaring the implants as plastic beads in plastic tubes, according to the report.
He sold these drugs to patients of his practice and implanted them without understanding the risks. Patients at the trial testified regarding the complications they received from the implantation procedure.