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Indian-origin gynecologist found guilty of misconduct in Memphis
Sanjeev Kumar was convicted of 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 counts of misbranding medical devices, and six counts of health care fraud.
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Pranavi Sharma - Tue, 13, Jan 2026
- 03:11 EST
- 13
Representative image / Pexels
An Indian-origin gynecologist in Memphis on Jan. 8 was found guilty on federal charges involving adulterated and misbranded medical devices and health care fraud, following a three-and-a-half-week trial.
A federal jury convicted Sanjeev Kumar of 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 counts of misbranding medical devices and six counts of health care fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Tennessee said Jan. 8. The verdict came after five days of jury deliberations.
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Prosecutors said Kumar, a gynecologic oncologist, submitted and caused employees to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare and Medicaid between 2019 and 2024 for hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures that were not medically necessary and were performed using improperly handled devices.
Kumar operated the Poplar Avenue Clinic, a women’s health clinic in Memphis. Between September 2019 and April 2024, he and advanced practitioners he supervised performed more than 15,000 hysteroscopies with biopsy on 5,559 Medicare and Medicaid patients, according to trial evidence.
The procedure involves inserting a hysteroscope through the cervix into the uterus and using a grasper or pipelle to collect a tissue sample to diagnose endometrial cancer. Federal regulators had cleared certain devices for single use and others for reuse only if strict reprocessing instructions were followed.
Prosecutors said Kumar routinely failed to properly reprocess reusable devices between patients and reused single-use devices without proper labeling. He purchased fewer than 200 new single-use hysteroscopes during the period, and several single-use graspers bought in 2019 were still in use in 2024.
Kumar billed more than $41 million for the procedures during the period and received more than $4.8 million from Medicare and Medicaid alone.
Sentencing is scheduled for April 9, 2026. Kumar faces up to 10 years in prison on each health care fraud count and up to three years on each adulteration and misbranding count.
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