17 yrs. for Menendez-linked doc’s $73M fraud

The prominent Florida eye doctor accused of bribing Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey received a 17year sentence Thursday for stealing $73 million from Medicare by persuading elderly patients to undergo excruciating tests and treatments they didn’t need.

Dr. Salomon Melgen was convicted of 67 crimes, including health-care fraud, submitting false claims and falsifying records.

Prosecutors showed that between 2008 and 2013, he became the nation’s highestpaid Medicare doctor, building his practice by giving el- derly patients unnecessary eye injections and laser blasts on their retinas that some compared to torture.

Melgen was ordered to pay $42.6 million in restitution to Medicare. He has been in custody since his April 28, 2017, conviction in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Separately, in November, a federal jury in New Jersey hung after a 2½-month trial in which prosecutors tried to prove Melgen’s gifts to Menendez were bribes.

In return, they said, Menendez interceded with Medicare officials investigating his practice, obtained visas for Melgen’s foreign mistresses, and pressured the State Department to intervene in a business dispute he had with the Dominican government.

Menendez and Melgen denied wrongdoing. Prosecutors decided on Jan. 31 not to retry them.