State v. Krivitskiy

590 N.E.2d 1359, 70 Ohio App. 3d 293, 1990 Ohio App. LEXIS 4988
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedNovember 13, 1990
DocketNo. 90AP-196.
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 590 N.E.2d 1359 (State v. Krivitskiy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Krivitskiy, 590 N.E.2d 1359, 70 Ohio App. 3d 293, 1990 Ohio App. LEXIS 4988 (Ohio Ct. App. 1990).

Opinion

*294 Strausbaugh, Judge.

This is an appeal by defendant from a judgment of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas which convicted defendant on twenty-eight counts of trafficking in drugs, one count of Medicaid fraud, and one count of theft. Following a jury trial, the trial court sentenced defendant to a total of six and one-half to fifteen years in prison with two years’ actual incarceration.

Defendant, Leonid Krivitskiy, was jointly tried with his ex-wife and receptionist, Lilia Deutsch, for theft, Medicaid fraud, and aggravated drug trafficking. The state presented testimony from fifteen undercover Columbus police detectives, state Medicaid fraud agents, and agents from the Attorney General’s office of criminal identification and investigation, who described their nine-month “sting operation” which occurred at defendant’s medical practice on East Broad Street in Bexley, Ohio. Narcotics agents originally received complaints about defendant from pharmacies as early as 1983. In June 1987, agents Jenny Rarick and David Roberson, while making undercover buys in Zanesville as part of a separate investigation, were introduced into defendant’s office as patients seeking prescriptions of the addictive Schedule IV drug, diazepam, which is a form of Valium. In October 1987, Rarick and Roberson returned to defendant’s office wearing body wires and again received prescriptions from defendant in exchange for cash without receiving any medical services.

Subsequently, an extensive investigation of defendant’s medical practice took place from March 7, 1988 through November 29, 1988, which culminated in the execution of a search warrant at defendant’s office on December 21, 1989. The agents’ testimony indicated that Deutsch made en masse appointments for groups of agents ranging in size from four to eleven. Using aliases, some agents posed as welfare recipients with Medicaid cards while others posed as cash-paying patients. On each agent’s initial visit, Deutsch asked the agent to fill out personal information on a medical history form. Defendant then quickly reviewed the past medical history part of the form and, after a very brief examination, would prescribe either diazepam or its more expensive counterpart, Xanax. The agents testified that their initial office visits with defendant lasted between three to six minutes, excluding time spent in the waiting room, and that subsequent visits lasted one to four minutes. Agents posing as patients saw defendant a total of one hundred four times during the investigation, during which they were in defendant’s examination room a total of two hundred sixty-seven minutes, or an average of two minutes thirty-six seconds per patient, per visit.

Agents who posed as welfare recipients were required to submit their Medicaid cards to Deutsch before being admitted to the examination room. *295 When Medicaid was billed for the agents’ visits, there were only three different Medicaid codes used, which netted defendant fees ranging from $18 to $28, per visit. In contrast, agents who posed as cash-paying patients were required to pay $25 up front before receiving their prescriptions and were scheduled for appointments less frequently than those who were receiving treatment under Medicaid. There was also testimony that defendant billed Medicaid for office visits which never occurred. In fact, of a total of one hundred four scheduled visits, agents were physically present only seventy-one times, yet defendant prescribed for them in their absence.

Following an examination of defendant’s Medicaid billings, it was apparent that defendant utilized only three specific Medicaid codes: 90080, 90060, and 90020. The state presented an expert, Dr. Trent Sickles, who described the codes for which defendant billed Medicaid. A visit coded for 90080 payment is a comprehensive examination for an established patient, which should take the average physician a minimum of one hour to perform. The code 90020 designates a comprehensive examination for a new patient, which includes filling out a past medical history form such as the one defendant used and would normally take one hour to complete. A 90060 code would also entail a one-hour visit with a patient. Dr. Sickles testified that defendant’s medical records and documentation did not justify defendant’s billing Medicaid using any of the three codes which defendant routinely used. Dr. Sickles said it would be impossible to diagnose an insomnia or anxiety disorder on the basis of a two-minute office visit, and that while diazepam or Xanax is appropriate to prescribe for such symptoms, they are very addictive drugs and it is not standard medical practice to prescribe refills for these drugs every two weeks for months at a time as defendant did.

Deutsch testified that she did the Medicaid billings for defendant’s practice and claimed that for eight years she billed using only three Medicaid codes because she was unable to understand the billing code book. To decide which Medicaid billing codes to use, Deutsch said she either looked inside the patient’s folder or asked defendant. She stated on direct examination that the most patients defendant ever saw in one day was seven, but on cross-examination, she admitted that defendant routinely saw many more than that, as many as thirty-five patients in one day. Deutsch also admitted that cash customers’ prescriptions were routinely for sixty diazepam or Xanax pills, while Medicaid customers received only thirty pills and were rescheduled for another office visit in sixteen days, per defendant’s instructions. The net •result was that the average cash-paying patient paid $25 per month to see defendant and received a prescription of twice as many pills as did the average Medicaid patient, whose welfare card was charged approximately $56 per month.

*296 On appeal, defendant sets forth two assignments of error for this court’s review:

“1. Where the chief detective in charge of an investigation of an accused admits in his direct testimony that an integral part of said investigation was to entrap the accused, said entrapment defense is established as a matter of law, and the verdict of the jury cannot stand.

“2. Where the errors of law are so numerous during the course of a jury trial, an accused is denied his right to a fair trial consistent with the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”

Defendant argues in his first assignment of error that his conviction cannot stand on the basis of entrapment. Defendant insists that the evidence in the present case demonstrates that the police decided to entrap defendant and that the chief supervisor of the operation, along with fellow agents, acted to entrap defendant into selling improper prescriptions.

In State v. Doran (1983), 5 Ohio St.3d 187, 5 OBR 404, 449 N.E.2d 1295, the Supreme Court adopted the subjective definition for the defense of entrapment so as to focus upon the predisposition of the accused to commit an offense as opposed to an objective test which would focus upon the degree of inducement used by the police so as to determine whether such actions would induce an ordinary law-abiding citizen to commit an offense. The Supreme Court held in paragraph one of the syllabus:

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Bluebook (online)
590 N.E.2d 1359, 70 Ohio App. 3d 293, 1990 Ohio App. LEXIS 4988, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-krivitskiy-ohioctapp-1990.