NORFOLK, Va. — It’s day three of jury deliberations in the court case regarding Chesapeake OBGYN, Javaid Perwaiz.
He’s in federal court on 61 counts of health care fraud and more.
Six women and six men hold the fate of Doctor Javaid Perwaiz in their hands. Those jurors have 800 pieces of evidence and 8,000 medical documents to sift through.
Then, they’ll decide if the defendant used his patients’ bodies for unnecessary surgeries to get money from insurance companies.
For each of the 61 charges, the jurors must unanimously decide if Dr. Perwaiz is guilty.
Prosecutors claim he falsified hysteroscopies and colposcopies, sterilization consent forms, estimated delivery dates, patient symptoms, patient statements, and forced cancer scares.
They claim Perwaiz did all of this so he could perform more procedures, claim more on insurance forms, and have more money for a “lavish lifestyle.”
Perwaiz was enrolled as a provider with multiple health insurance companies including Medicare, Medicaid, and Anthem.
According to the indictment, Perwaiz was an outlier for in-office diagnostic hysteroscopics. A medical analysis shows he performed 87 in-office hysteroscopics in 2017.
The next leading provider performed six that year.
It’s also worth noting this isn’t his first time he’s faced felony charges. In 1996, Perwaiz was convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia of two counts of felony tax evasion by filing fraudulent tax returns. That included him trying to claim the purchase of a Ferrari, by labeling it as an ultrasound machine.
A judge sentenced him to five years of probation and more.
In 1983, Maryview Hospital terminated his privileges. An indictment shows it was due to poor clinical judgment, unnecessary surgery, lack of documentation, and discrepancies in recordkeeping.
Perwaiz’s Virginia medical license was suspended from April 1996 to about July 1996, as a result of his felony tax convictions that same year.
His medical license was later reinstated -- with stipulations -- and Perwaiz returned to the staff at Maryview Hospital in 1997, with a monitoring program over his surgical cases.
In September of 1999, the Virginia Department of Health Professions decided Perwaiz followed all of the conditions. So, they ended his probation.
During Wednesday's closing arguments, Perwaiz’s attorney claimed his client didn’t deny making mistakes on paperwork and was transparent about changing dates on medical documents, but he did it to help patients and was not scheming as federal prosecutors claim.
Some charges he faces carry a possible sentence of 10 to 20 years.
If the jury finds him guilty of all charges, the U.S. Attorney's office says he could spend a maximum of 539 years behind bars.
However, the exact amount of time for the sentencing is up to federal judge Rebecca Beach Smith.