By Matt Bruce
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. — A Baton Rouge man accused of lying about having a medical degree, posing as a doctor and working as an Acadian Ambulance paramedic for four years was indicted Friday in federal court.
Samrat Mukherjee, 35, was charged with falsely holding himself as a medical doctor and making false statements by calling in prescriptions without authority, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baton Rouge.
The three-count indictment indicates Mukherjee was licensed as a paramedic and worked for Lafayette-based Acadian Ambulance Service even though he never graduated from, or even attended, medical school.
Federal authorities allege Mukherjee lied to friends and co-workers, telling them he was a licensed medical doctor. He called in prescriptions for himself and others between May 2019 and November 2022 and fraudulently claimed he had authority to write the medical scripts, according to the indictment.
Mukherjee was arrested in July on counts of computer fraud, forgery and illegal transfer of monetary funds, 19th Judicial District Court records show. State prosecutors have yet to bring forth any formal charges in that case.
According to a Sept. 7 civil lawsuit filed in the 19th JDC, Mukherjee used the credentials of his former LSU college roommate — a licensed physician at Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge — to illegally prescribe meds. The plaintiff, Dr. Loi Le, is suing Mukherjee, Acadian Ambulance and the company’s liability insurer.
His lawsuit indicates Mukherjee was hired as a medic in 2018. Acadian Ambulance officials said he underwent paramedic training and was certified as an EMT. Shortly after joining Acadian Ambulance’s staff, he was featured in a WAFB story that celebrated emergency first responders.
Mukherjee also began presenting a fake degree in 2018 showing he graduated from the Tulane University School of Medicine.
Agents from the Louisiana Bureau of Investigations checked with Tulane University officials, who reviewed their records and found no evidence Mukherjee received a medical degree from the school, according to an arrest warrant referenced in the civil complaint.
Mukherjee’s summer arrest on state charges stemmed from an investigation by LBI and the Louisiana Department of Justice. According to that investigation, Mukherjee posed as a licensed physician at several area hospitals and managed to get a facility access badge as a “resident” at Baton Rouge General Medical Center under false pretenses in January 2019 . He was never employed at the hospital. He was also seen entering Our Lady of the Lake Hospital and other clinics wearing a white lab coat with " Samrat Mukherjee M.D .” embroidered on it, court records allege.
Mukherjee was listed as a “flight physician” in an August 2022 social media post by Acadian Ambulance, the civil filing against him states. He later fired from the company after officials became aware of the investigation, a company official said.
In the lawsuit, Le says he reported Mukherjee to a supervisor at Acadian Ambulance in December when he learned that Mukherjee was acting as a doctor. Le said he knew his former college roommate had never completed his undergraduate studies and he immediately became “upset and disturbed” when he found out Mukherjee was treating patients.
The civil complaint alleges that in October 2022, Mukherjee examined a 3-year-old with a skull fracture and told the child to walk despite the severity of the injuries. A chief medical officer at Acadian Ambulance told Le that Mukherjee used his National Prescription Identified, or NPI, number to prescribe the meds illegally and he had been using Le’s credential number to pose as a physician, the lawsuit states.
Acadian Ambulance officials reported the allegations to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office , Our Lady of the Lake, the DEA and several other authorities last December. State agencies began investigating Mukherjee in February.
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