Feds: No leak to press in Merrick doctor’s opioid case

Federal prosecutors last week asked a judge to deny a Merrick doctor’s motion to dismiss the charges that he illegally prescribed opioid pain medications, also refuting the accusation that they leaked information to the press to prejudice the case.

In June, initial charges against Dr. Michael Belfiore were dismissed on a technicality, but prosecutors quickly resurrected the case with a new indictment, and according to Belfiore’s Garden City-based attorney, Thomas Liotti, they have tried to prejudice any future jurors who might hear Belfiore’s case using the media and cases that are past the statute of limitations.

In subpoenaing the medical records of a Glen Cove man who was a patient of Belfiore’s, and who died of an overdose in 2009, prosecutors were seeking to “create adverse publicity,” Liotti said in court filings. According to Liotti, the prosecution “leaked word of” the subpoena to the Herald, who published a two-part series on the man’s death, in order to injure Belfiore in the public eye.

Federal prosecutors did not speak to the Herald at any time about whether they would subpoena Marra’s medical records, or whether they planned to implicate Belfiore in his death. Liotti, however, did say on July 25 that the government had issued him the subpoena for Marra’s records.

Prosecutors affirmed that there was no leak of information in their Sept. 8 filing.

“First, the government did not ‘leak’ anything, and besides making these bald assertions, the defendant offers no proof that this occurred,” prosecutors wrote.

Belfiore, prosecutors said, has no way of proving vindictive prosecution, and so has put forth “a myriad of spurious allegations,” including the accusation of leaking. Belfiore also pointed to the fact that he was not allowed to testify before the second grand jury and the addition of the two former patient’s deaths, as proof that the government is prosecuting him vindictively.

Prosecutors said in their most recent filing that Belfiore was well aware that the two overdose deaths would be raised if he did not agree to a plea deal, which was offered early in the case.

Also, the prosecution was under no obligation to let Belfiore testify to the first grand jury, although they did allow it — for nine hours. “Coupled with the fact that this entire testimony was read aloud to Grand Jury No. 2, [this] flies in the face of any allegation of vindictiveness, and should be rejected,” prosecutors said.

Belfiore, in his motion to dismiss, also said that prosecutors gave a copy of the second indictment to the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct, which prosecutors denied. In response to Belfiore’s allegation that they were acting vindictively by contacting his wife and employees during their investigation, prosecutors said that they were only conducting a thorough investigation and any suggestion otherwise was “absurd.”

Finally, prosecutors said, much of the adverse publicity Belfiore complained of in his motion to dismiss is of his own making.

“The defendant … has spoken to reports both on camera and off camera, and has voluntarily engaged in civil litigation with one or more pharmaceutical companies, claiming, in essence, that their conduct is to blame for the overdose deaths,” prosecutors wrote, referring to Belfiore’s intervention in a Suffolk County suit against Purdue Pharma for the company’s alleged role in the opioid epidemic.

The criminal case is currently set to go to trial in November.