Doctor indicted in Westbrook methadone case

PORTLAND – A well-known doctor in the field of methadone treatment has been indicted on charges of falsifying records and writing prescriptions without a permit.

A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Dr. Mark S. Shinderman of CAP Quality Care, a for-profit methadone clinic in Westbrook. The clinic is also named in a civil complaint.

The U.S. Attorney’s office said that Shinderman wrote prescriptions for controlled substances by forging the name and using the Drug Enforcement Administration registration number of another physician.

Prosecutors also allege that he engaged in Medicaid fraud by dispensing take-home doses of methadone to patients who did not qualify for them, and billed Medicaid for counseling and treatment that patients did not receive.

Shinderman, 63, has been under investigation for almost two years, but the indictment came as a surprise, said his attorney, Thimi Mina of Portland.

“We haven’t even had time to examine the charges, but if the indictment is based on what I’ve seen this afternoon, he’s going to plead not guilty and take his case before a jury,” Mina said.

“It’s one thing to get an indictment from a grand jury that hears only from the prosecutor and quite another to convict based on competent evidence,” Mina said. “We hope and expect Dr. Shinderman will be exonerated.”

Shinderman has operated methadone clinics in Maine and Illinois for more than 30 years and has been a celebrated and controversial figure in the addiction treatment community.

Shinderman is a champion of high dosage methadone treatment, which he says reduces the chances that a patient will relapse and return to illegal drug use. Methadone is a synthetic narcotic used to treat those addicted to heroin and other opiates.

That philosophy, combined with a policy of letting some patients take home doses for a week or more rather than make daily visits to clinics, was cited as a contributing factor in the high number of narcotics overdose deaths in Portland in 2002, CAP Quality Care’s first full year of operation.

Sgt. Scott Pelletier of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency said a large number of the overdose deaths were traced to methadone that was prescribed to patients at CAP Quality Care and another Portland-area methadone clinic, then taken home and sold or traded for other drugs.

The victims were usually not clinic patients and had no tolerance for methadone, he said.

On Sept. 9, 2003, agents from the DEA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services executed a search warrant at CAP and seized records.