By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

A Niagara Falls physician was arrested during a morning raid at his Main Street clinic and charged with illegal distribution of controlled substances.

Dr. Pravin Mehta, 73, of Amherst, was among 14 defendants arrested in connection with what authorities say was a widescale effort to illegally prescribe and distribute controlled substances.

Mehta was taken into custody after police raided his medical office. It was the culmination of an investigation stretching back to 2007.

The doctor is alleged to have been issuing prescriptions for primarily Opana and Oxycontin - drugs that are highly addictive and can command as much as $50 per pill on the street - to patients without a proper medical examination.

At an afternoon news conference detailing the charges, William Hochul Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, said Mehta saw some patients for as little as one minute and wrote prescriptions for the powerful drugs.

"Dr. Mehta is accused of selling prescription drugs to both undercover officers and people cooperating with law enforcement without any kind of medical justification or medical necessity at all," Hochul said.

Niagara Falls Police Superintendent John Chella said that at times, so many patients were lined up outside Mehta's office, an individual was overheard saying, "I thought they were giving out free food there."

Instead, according to law enforcement officials, he was giving out prescriptions.

Hochul said patients could ask for both the type of pill and the dosage they wanted and Mehta would write the prescription.

According to data provided by the Buffalo office of the Drug Enforcement Agency, which took part in the investigation, from August 2007 through February 2010 Mehta wrote more than 40,000 scripts for controlled substances, including Oxycodone and Hydrocodone.

Those prescriptions totaled more than 3 million doses of the two drugs.

"In 2009, Dr. Mehta was the second-largest prescriber of prescription drugs in New York state," Hochul said.

Mehta, who specialized in internal medicine, billed more to Medicaid for controlled substances than the other 157 doctors in Niagara Falls combined - nearly $3 million.

"To put that in perspective, in 2009 he prescribed almost twice as many pills as all of the doctors in Niagara County combined," Hochul said.

Law enforcement agencies gathered evidence against the doctor through a combination of undercover police officers and individuals cooperating with police to infiltrate the office and obtain prescriptions.

Hochul said his office immediately suspended Mehta's license to write prescriptions and that if he made bail, he would be required to surrender his passport.

Mehta is known to regularly traveled outside of the country.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or both.