Former Vegas doctor convicted in hepatitis C murder wants fraud case moved to Reno

Lawyers for Dr. Dipak Desai are pushing to let him plead guilty and be sentenced in Reno — rather than Las Vegas — in a federal health care fraud conspiracy stemming from the 2007 hepatitis C outbreak.

In court papers late last week, lead defense lawyer Richard Wright said the move would allow Desai to remain in the state prison medical unit in Carson City where he is being treated for “neurological and cardiac” conditions.

Desai, 65, who has suffered three strokes since 2007, is serving a life sentence under medical watch at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center for the murder of a patient in the Las Vegas hepatitis outbreak.

Wright said Desai’s family worries that he won’t get proper medical attention in Las Vegas while waiting to enter his plea on the fraud charges.

Last month, both sides in the federal case said in joint court papers that Desai agreed to the still-secret terms of the guilty plea, but the defense needed more time to go over the deal with him before he appears in court.

Though a federal mental evaluation found Desai competent to stand trial, the plea deal has been slowed by his “diminished capacity,” the lawyers wrote.

No date has been set for Desai to enter his guilty plea in court, but amid the negotiations Senior U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks, who is based in Reno, continued Desai’s Las Vegas trial until April 28.

A defense expert recommended that Hicks allow more time for hearings to accommodate Desai’s cognitive and communication deficiencies, Wright said in his court papers last week. The expert also recommended that an interpreter proficient in Desai’s native language, Gujarati, be on hand.

Federal prosecutors have not yet responded to Wright’s requested move to Reno.

A previous state mental evaluation found that Desai was exaggerating the effects of his strokes. Clark County prosecutors accused him of “malingering.”

Following a lengthy trial, a District Court jury convicted Desai in July 2013 of all 27 criminal counts related to the hepatitis C outbreak, including second-degree murder in the death of infected patient Rodolfo Meana, 77.

District Judge Valerie Adair later sentenced Desai to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 18 years.

His conviction allowed federal prosecutors to focus on their case against Desai and his former clinic manager, Tonya Rushing, who were indicted by a federal grand jury in 2011 on one count of conspiracy and 25 counts of health care fraud.

Rushing, who testified against Desai in the state trial, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge in July and is waiting to be sentenced.

Desai and Rushing were accused of carrying out a scheme from January 2005 to February 2008 to inflate the length of medical procedures and overbill health insurance companies.

The state charges, which included criminal neglect of patients and insurance fraud, involved the hepatitis C infections of Meana and six other patients at Desai’s now-closed Las Vegas endoscopy center. Health officials genetically linked the blood-borne virus in those patients to the clinic.

Prosecutors contended during the trial that unsafe injection practices involving the anesthetic propofol led to the outbreak.

Double-dipping syringes into propofol bottles used on multiple patients spread the virus from source patients infected with hepatitis C on two dates in 2007, prosecutors alleged.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter.