Memphis Gynecologist Sanjeev Kumar Sentenced To 20 Years For Adulterating Medical Devices And Health Care Fraud

Performed more than 15,000 biopsy procedures with adulterated devices on Medicare and Medicaid patients

In January of this year, Sanjeev Kumar, 45, was found guilty by a federal jury of 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 counts of misbranding medical devices, and 6 counts of health care fraud.

On July 8, 2026, Kumar was sentenced by Chief United States District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman to 240 months in prison with two years of supervised release. D. Michael Dunavant, United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, announced the sentence.

Evidence presented at the trial demonstrated that Kumar was a Mayo-trained gynecologic oncologist who operated Poplar Avenue Clinic, a women’s health clinic in Memphis, Tennessee.

Single-use devices used to perform the hysteroscopy with biopsy procedure to diagnose endometrial cancer, which had specific methods to disinfect for re-use, were not followed by Kumar, according to the evidence presented.

Kumar routinely failed to subject the reusable devices to vital reprocessing steps between patient use thereby endangering patient safety, the press release said. The single use devices, even if they had been correctly reprocessed, had to be labeled as such; and Kumar did not label them. Kumar used adulterated medical devices in more than 15,000 hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures on Medicare and Medicaid patients between September of 2019 and April of 2024.

Kumar purchased less than 200 new hysteroscopes and 3 of the 6 single use graspers of a certain type he purchased in 2019 were still in use in the office in April 2024. Thousands of women were subjected to hysteroscopies with biopsy using the dirty devices, prosecutors proved.

Kumar billed more than $41 million for the hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures between September 2019 and April 2024. He netted more than $4.8 million for this procedure from Medicare and Medicaid alone. That amount does not include any hysteroscopy with biopsy procedures performed on patients with private health care insurance.

A separate hearing to determine restitution has been set on October 2, 2026.

This case was investigated by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (HHS-OIG), the United States Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA-OCI), the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).