Ex-Greensburg doctor sentenced to 1 year in prison for selling scripts

A former Greensburg physician with a gambling habit who operated an addiction treatment practice was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Nabil Jabbour, 69, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh on three counts of distributing buprenorphine and single counts of health care fraud and money laundering.

He had been found guilty of prescribing drugs in return for cash, defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid programs and laundering about $60,000 at a Washington County casino.

Jabbour was ordered to pay a $75,000 fine and $40,000 restitution to Medicare and the state’s Medicaid program. He also must forfeit $17,000 in cash and Meadows Casino gambling chips that agents had seized during the investigation.

Jabbour, who had an office on Harvey Street in Greensburg and one on East Crawford Street in Connellsville, had pleaded guilty in October 2019 to the charges.

The doctor had “operated a cash-only business that took advantage of vulnerable patients seeking help for their opioid addiction so that he could spend their money at casinos,” said Western Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Scott Brady.

Jabbour admitted to fraudulently prescribing buprenorphine, which has trade names of Suboxone and Subutex, in return for cash from undercover agents three times between July and December 2016, prosecutors said. Prescriptions of Suboxone, used to treat opioid-addicted patients, typically were sold for $100 on the first visit and $80 on subsequent visits, prosecutors said.

The doctor admitted laundering at the Meadows Casino the $13,960 he obtained by selling the fraudulent bupernorphone prescriptions. Jabbour also admitted to laundering about $47,000 in cash from his buprenorphine practice during four other trips to the Meadows Casino, prosecutors said.

In his plea statement, Jabbour agreed he fraudulently prescribed between 10,000 and 20,000 dosage units of the drugs to treat addiction.

The U.S. Attorney did not say when he would start his prison sentence.

Jabbour’s former office manager was charged in a drug scheme in February 2019, as well as four others who allegedly permitted themselves to be used in a drug-procuring scheme.

State and federal law enforcement conducted the investigation into Jabbour, including the state Attorney General’s agents, state police, Greensburg and South Greensburg police and Westmoreland County sheriff’s deputies.