Great Neck Doctor Gets 7 Years for Oxycodone Pill Mill

A Great Neck doctor who turned her medical practice into what federal prosecutors called a “pill mill” was sentenced last week to seven years in federal prison for illegally prescribing oxycodone and defrauding health insurers.

Dr. Roya Jafari-Hassad, who operated offices in Great Neck, Forest Hills, Queens, and Manhattan, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown in federal court in Central Islip. Beyond the prison term, Brown hit her with a $150,000 fine and ordered her to pay $152,765 in restitution.

The sentence caps a case that laid bare a cynical operation built on the suffering of addicted patients. From January 2019 through May 2022, Jafari-Hassad collected hundreds of dollars in cash from patients each month in exchange for oxycodone prescriptions, prosecutors said. Sometimes she didn’t even bother with an in-person examination. Payment information was collected, and prescriptions were refilled immediately. The arrangement reportedly netted her hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

A jury convicted her in December 2024 on eight counts of prescribing oxycodone without a legitimate medical purpose. She later pleaded guilty in April 2025 to health care fraud, after prosecutors established she had submitted false claims to Medicare and private insurers for procedures she never performed.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. of the Eastern District of New York didn’t mince words. “Dr. Jafari-Hassad used her medical practice to deal drugs, a disgraceful betrayal of her doctor’s oath to do no harm,” Nocella said in a statement, adding that the sentence holds her accountable for “capitalizing on her patients’ dangerous opioid addictions to enrich herself.”

Frank A. Tarentino III, associate chief of operations for the DEA’s Northeast Region, said she “turned her medical office into a modern-day pill mill.” Naomi Gruchacz, special agent in charge of the HHS Office of Inspector General’s investigations in the New York region, was equally blunt, saying Jafari-Hassad’s illegal prescriptions “contributed to fueling the opioid epidemic.”

That phrase should stop every Long Islander cold. We have buried too many people on this Island because of oxycodone. Nassau and Suffolk counties were ground zero for the prescription opioid crisis that exploded in the 2010s, and the damage to families here never fully healed. Pill mills like the one Jafari-Hassad allegedly operated were the engine of that disaster, and every prescriber who turned a medical license into a cash register for narcotics carries responsibility for the wreckage.

What makes this case particularly infuriating is the calculated nature of the fraud. This wasn’t a physician who made poor clinical judgments under pressure or got too liberal with pain management in complex cases. Prosecutors describe a businesswoman who streamlined the transaction: take cash, skip the exam, hand over the pills, repeat. She then doubled down by billing Medicare and insurers for work she never did.

Seven years is a substantial sentence. Federal mandatory minimums on drug distribution can be harsh, and Judge Brown had discretion to craft a sentence that fit both the criminal conduct and the specific defendant. Whether seven years feels sufficient depends on your view of deterrence. The opioid epidemic killed more than 500,000 Americans over the past two decades. Doctors who fed that epidemic with fraudulent prescriptions have blood on their hands that a prison term and restitution order can’t fully wash away.

What Long Islanders should take from this case is a reminder that the opioid crisis didn’t happen by accident. It was engineered, in part, by medical professionals who prioritized profit over patients. The DEA, HHS investigators, and Nocella’s office deserve credit for seeing this prosecution through from investigation to conviction to sentencing. That process took years, and it required a jury trial before Jafari-Hassad ultimately admitted to the fraud component.

The system worked here, even if it worked slowly. For the patients whose addictions Jafari-Hassad exploited for cash, and for the families they left behind, that may offer cold comfort. But accountability matters. On Long Island, where communities lost a generation to opioids, it matters a great deal.