Tameshwar Ammar, a former medical doctor who practiced in Roslyn, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to illegally distribute opioids.
Ammar, who was indicted in November and worked at Age Management Associates at 55 Bryant Ave., relinquished his license to practice medicine on June 22, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office of the Eastern District of New York.
In federal court in Central Islip on Monday, Ammar pleaded guilty via teleconference to conspiring to illegally distribute oxycodone before U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley. As part of his plea, the office said, Ammar agreed to forfeit approximately $245,700 as proceeds involved in the oxycodone offense.
Court documents said that between 2013 and 2019, Ammar illegally prescribed more than 19,000 oxycodone pills to two individuals, identified in the indictment as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2.
The U.S. attorney’s office said that Ammar prescribed over 8,000 pills to John Doe 1 with the knowledge that he would be reselling them and that he prescribed over 11,000 pills to John Doe 2, even after the latter was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. John Doe 2 died in 2019 of a mix of oxycodone, methadone, which attorneys also claim Ammar prescribed, and ketamine.
Seth DuCharme, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said Monday that Ammar had “betrayed [his] oath to do no harm.”
“Today’s guilty plea establishes that the defendant, who was a doctor, essentially acted as a drug dealer, spreading injury and addiction without regard for the consequences,” DuCharme said.
Ray Donovan, special agent in charge of the New York division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said that the guilty plea “shows that [Ammar’s] motivation was greed, not the welfare and health of his patients.”
“Instead of healing, he chose a dangerous path of causing addiction, overdose, and overwhelming suffering to many,” Donovan said.
A biography in the fall 2008 issue of Elements Magazine said that Ammar, who graduated from SUNY Stony Brook’s School of Medicine at age 22, was the youngest graduate in SUNY medical school history at the time.
The magazine said he also completed research and served as chief resident at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
When sentenced in October, could Ammar face up to 20 years in prison.
