A doctor who pleaded no contest to one felony count each of unlawfully prescribing the diet pill phentermine and submitting a fraudulent claim for Medi-Cal reimbursement was sentenced Friday to four years in custody and ordered to pay more than $132,000 in restitution to Medi-Cal.
Dr. Thomas Lin, 46, is scheduled to surrender at 6 p.m. Friday to begin serving his two-year jail sentence, which will then be followed by two years under mandatory supervision once he is released from jail, according to Deputy District Attorney Keith Koyano.
Lin pleaded no contest last Dec. 18.
Defense attorney Tracy Green said last December that she believed the plea was a “fair resolution.” She noted that her client — who has credit for 98 days in custody — might only have to serve about three months more behind bars.
Green said she would eventually ask that the charges to which Lin pled be reduced to misdemeanors and expunged.
The charges, handed down in a September 2013 indictment, stemmed from allegations that investigators from the state medical board posed as new patients and were able to secure phentermine with little or no physical examination by Lin.
Two of Lin’s former employees at his Monterey Park pediatric clinic — who were charged along with him in the indictment — also pleaded no contest last December.
Nobel Lin, 43, to whom the doctor is not related, pleaded no contest to four misdemeanor counts of unlawful controlled substance prescription involving phentermine. He was immediately sentenced to three years probation.
Ricardo Chavarria, 27, pleaded no contest to one felony count of sale or transportation of a controlled substance involving phentermine. He was immediately sentenced to three years probation and ordered to register with law enforcement as a narcotics offender.
—City News Service