A former Mississippi oncologist serving two decades behind bars for a chemotherapy fraud scheme has had her sentence commuted by President Joe Biden.
On Thursday, Dec. 12, the Biden administration announced that 39 prisoners would be pardoned and that another 1,499 would be granted sentence leniency in the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history. One of the inmates receiving clemency is Dr. Meera Sachdeva, the founder of the Rose Cancer Center in Pike County, who was serving a 20-year stint behind bars.
Back in 2012, Sachdeva pleaded guilty to one count of healthcare fraud and two counts of making false statements relating to healthcare matters in federal court. Sachdeva, along with two cohorts, defrauded Medicare and Medicaid by billing for services that were never rendered and over-inflating the amount of dosages her clinic had administered.
While many patients were under the impression that they were receiving full doses of chemotherapy treatments, they were actually getting partial amounts of the medication — though Sachdeva billed the government for the full dosage units. Sachdeva and her staff also reused needles at the clinic and gave patients chemotherapy treatments that had expired.
Rose Cancer Center was said to be so unsanitary that multiple patients were admitted to local hospitals with infections after visiting Sachdeva’s clinic. For this, she was given a 20-year prison sentence followed by three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine and nearly $8.2 million in restitution while having to forfeit $6 million and four parcels of property.
Sachdeva sought “compassionate relief” for her sentence in 2020 during the apex of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing a health condition that would drastically worsen if she were to contract the virus. Those efforts were denied by two courts. However, the former practicing oncologist met the standards set by the Biden Administration that each inmate receiving clemency had served their sentences at home for “at least one year under the COVID-era CARES Act.”
“These Americans have been reunited with their families and shown their commitment to rehabilitation by securing employment and advancing their education,” a statement from the White House reads.
The president has the power to commute a sentence, or lessen the amount of time the inmate will spend incarcerated, imposed by a federal court. Per her original sentence, Sachdeva still had eight more years to serve. It is unclear how much more time she will remain incarcerated.
