Oncologist Charged With the Illegal Sale of Cancer Drugs

In late October, a federal grand jury charged a Detroit-area medical oncologist Naveed Aslam, MD, in an indictment for his part in a scheme to illegally sell cancer drugs.

According to the indictment, Aslam acquired and sold more than $17 million in cancer drugs and personally netted more than $2.5 million during the scheme.

The charges against Aslam, filed on October 23 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, include 1src counts of illegally selling or trading prescription drugs and one count of conspiring to do so.

“Dr Aslam’s alleged participation in this scheme not only allowed him to profit unlawfully from the sale of cancer drugs but it also posed a serious threat by potentially placing these medications into the wrong hands,” Cheyvoryea Gibson, special agent in charge of the FBI in Michigan, said in a press release announcing the indictment.

The investigation is being conducted jointly by the FBI, the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and Homeland Security Investigations.

The indictment alleges that Aslam was recruited by an unnamed operator of a Michigan corporation that engaged in business as a retail pharmacy and in the wholesale distribution of expensive prescription drugs, largely oncology drugs.

According to the indictment, Aslam and the operator came to an agreement where Aslam would purchase these expensive drugs from an authorized distributor under the false pretense that he was going to prescribe them to patients.

Instead, Aslam allegedly “sold and transferred the prescription drugs” to or through the Michigan business, with involvement from the unnamed operator and a second unnamed individual.

The unnamed individuals “identified customers interested in buying prescription cancer drugs” and “communicated with Dr Aslam about what cancer drugs were requested,” according to the press release. “Dr Aslam used his access to certain cancer drugs through his medical practice, Somerset Hematology and Oncology, P.C., to order and purchase the cancer drugs from his supplier.”

The indictment lays out that Aslam allegedly profited from this scheme in several ways, which included charging the Michigan business more than he paid the distributor for the drugs, sharing the profits when the business resold the drugs at a markup, and receiving rebates and discounts from the distributor “based on the amount of qualifying drugs he purchased and resold.”

According to the indictment, the scheme ran from early 2src19 to mid-2src23 and included four antibody drug conjugates — trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu), enfortumab vedotin (Padcev), tisotumab vedotin (Tivdak), and sacituzumab govitecan (Trodelvy) — and the monoclonal antibody mogamulizumab (Poteligeo) for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.

By working with Aslam, the operatives “obtained prescription drugs from an authorized distributor that they would not otherwise have been permitted to purchase, and which they were able to sell at a profit,” according to the indictment.

Both the prosecuting assistant US attorney, Andrew Lievense, and Aslam’s defense lawyer, Daniel Dena, declined to comment for Medscape Medical News.

The prosecutor is seeking to recoup the more than $2.5 million Aslam allegedly pocketed, according to the indictment. The press release also noted that an “indictment is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt.”

M. Alexander Otto is a physician assistant with a master’s degree in medical science and a journalism degree from Newhouse. He is an award-winning medical journalist who worked for several major news outlets before joining Medscape Medical News. Alex is also an MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow. Email: aotto@mdedge.com