Commonwealth v. Kobrin

The defendant, Kennard C. Kobrin, is a board certified psychiatrist who for many years maintained a busy private practice in Fall River. Many of his patients had dual diagnoses of mental illness and substance abuse; a significant subset was eligible for benefits under either the Medicare or Medicaid program, or both. In 1998, a grand jury returned sixteen indictments against Kobrin in eighty-two counts on charges stemming from practices in his Fall River office; the charges were in the nature of Medicaid fraud under G. L. c. 118E, §§40 and 41, and the illegal prescribing of controlled…