'What Larry Stands For' -- Taking Campaign Cash From A Pill Mill

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

The star of the 2017 video "What Larry Stands For" is Anmol Singh Kamra of the Philadelphia Sikh Society. 

That's him on camera in the red turban praising a silent but grinning Larry Krasner, then a candidate running for D.A.  

"Looking at us, don't we look like we're from two completely different parts of the world, two completely different backgrounds," Kamra says. "But henceforth, Larry is one of our family and here's why."

"There's one common thing that's common in humanity, doing the right [thing] by every human," Kamra says. "That's what Larry stands for. Vote for him, guys. He's the right guy for you. Larry for D.A. Vote him now."

The reason why the official 45-second Krasner For D.A. campaign video is no longer available on the Internet -- two years after it was made, Kamra was convicted in U.S. District Court of conspiring to distribute more than 82,000 Oxycodone pills to addicts.

The campaign video may be gone but Krasner has yet to return a total of $8,000 in contributions that he received in 2017 from Kamra, as well as Kamra's boss, who ran the pharmacy that the feds said had become a pill mill. 

The big question is: when Krasner made the video, did the future D.A. know that Kamra was under investigation by the FBI? Krasner's not talking but it's hard to believe he didn't know because Kamra was represented by a couple of lawyers from the defense law firm that Krasner turned his criminal law practice over to, a firm that Krasner then became of counsel to. 

According to prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office, Kamra was the "master drug dealer" in the conspiracy  to distribute Oxycodone that operated from December 2012 to March 2016 out of the Campus Pharmacy in West Philadelphia. 

George Fisher was the doctor who wrote hundreds of fraudulent prescriptions for some 46 "sham" patients.  Kamra, a pharmacy technician, filled the prescriptions that went to Frank Brown. Brown, an employee of Dr. Fisher's, then sold the pills on the street to addicts

Brown paid Kamra $500 for every phony prescription, the feds said. The pills from each prescription cost between $130 to $360. According to the federal indictment issued in June 2018 on a single count of conspiracy to distribute, Kamra pocketed the difference, at least $229,050.

On Nov. 27, 2019, after a ten-day trial, Kamra was convicted of a single count of conspiracy to distribute.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, Kamra would sell drugs without prescriptions and then request that Dr. Fisher backdate those fake prescriptions in an attempt to cover his tracks. 

At trial, Kamra testified that this backdating of prescriptions was a mere “courtesy” that he extended to the doctor so that patients could receive their prescriptions in a timely manner. But undercover video evidence presented at trial by the government showed that it was Kamra who was running the operation, and telling the doctor what to do. 

The result was that the relatively small Campus Pharmacy in West Philadelphia sold so many opioids that some drugs were hidden under the sink, the feds said, for fear that the pharmacy's distributor would notice the over-abundance of pills, and cut the pharmacy off for exceeding the allowable limit.

“Kamra was operating nothing more than a corrupt pill mill,” U.S. Attorney William McSwain said after Kamra was convicted at a trial where Dr. Fisher and Frank Brown testified on behalf of the government, and against Kamra, after pleading guilty to their roles in the conspiracy. 

“The misuse of opioids is killing our citizens, and this defendant significantly contributed to our
region’s crippling opioid epidemic," McSwain said. "We have to do everything possible to stop the illegal distribution of these deadly drugs, especially by professionals entrusted to prescribe and monitor their use.”

“Kamra diverted thousands of oxycodone pills to the street, taking advantage of those struggling with addiction amid our area’s devastating opioid crisis,” said Michael T. Harpster, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. 

Harpster described Kamra as “yet another medical professional, looking to profit from someone else’s misery."

Kamra, the master drug dealer and convicted pill mill operator, was also a contributor to Larry Krasner's first campaign for D.A.

In February and March of 2017, according to campaign finance records, Kamra, of Upper Darby, contributed a total of $4,000 to Krasner's campaign.

Those campaign contributions were matched in February and March of 2017 by Ewnetu Zerihun of Upper Darby, who similarly contributed a total of $4,000 to the Krasner campaign.

According to the feds, Zerihun, a licensed pharmacist who couldn't be reached for comment, was Kamra's boss. And the feds say that Kamra filled the phony prescriptions based on the instructions of his boss, as well as Dr. Fisher. During a grand jury investigation that preceded the indictment of Kamra, and the guilty pleas of Dr. Fisher and Brown, Zerihun pleaded the Fifth Amendment. 

The investigation began in 2015 when the FBI showed up at Dr. Fisher's office with a search warrant. A year later, the FBI served a search warrant on the Campus Pharmacy. The feds subsequently interviewed Kamra. 

And what does District Attorney Larry Krasner have to say about taking campaign contributions from the convicted operator of a pill mill, as well as his boss, who pleaded the Fifth before a federal grand jury?

As he has for the past 20 months, Krasner and Jane Roh, his spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment. But according to his public comments, Krasner claims to strongly oppose the abuse of opioids.

In 2018, Krasner sued ten pharmaceutical companies for their role in creating the city's opioid epidemic. In a press release, he explained why.

“The City of Philadelphia has been hurt, more than any other city in the nation, by the scourge of opioids," Krasner said. "The time to act is now, which is why I’ve taken this unprecedented action, in parallel with the City of Philadelphia’s suit, to stop these companies from systematically distracting the public from knowing the true dangers of opioid use as they reap billions of dollars in profits.”

Kamra was represented by James Funt and Ronald Greenblatt of Greenblatt, Pierce, Funt & Flores LLC, a firm with direct ties to Krasner. 

In July of 2017, Krasner announced that he was merging his former criminal law practice with the Greenblatt firm. For part of 2017, before he was elected D.A., Krasner was listed as of counsel to the Greenblatt Firm.

Other lawyers who were political allies of Krasner's also worked on the Kamra case.

According to a March 4, 2021 sentencing memorandum, Kamra was represented at his 2019 trial by Susan M. Lin of Kairys, Rodovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin. Krasner's wife, Lisa Rau, was a partner in that firm before she became a Common Pleas Court judge.

All three lawyers in the Kamra case were also campaign contributors to Krasner in 2017. According to campaign finance records, Greenblatt donated $2,000; Funt, $500; and Lin, $100. 

On Krasner's official Statement of Financial Interests filed with the city on May 1, 2018, he listed the Greenblatt firm as tenants at the Tiger Building at 239-41 South Camac Street, where Krasner has a 40% ownership interest. Krasner reported that he received income from the law firm, but was not required to disclose how much.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Kamra, a Sikh Indian, came to Philadelphia at age 17 to attend college at Duquesne University. He subsequently enrolled in Drexel University where he studied business and marketing, graduating in September 2019 with a 3.95 grade point average. 

According to Linked in, Anmol Singh Kamra is an "entrepreneur, marketer, investor, financier, advisor, philanthropist and public speaker with diverse professional experiences and a number of projects under his belt. His professional experience includes a track-record of working with diverse companies and projects in the fields of entrepreneurship and marketing."

In her sentencing memorandum, Lin described her 27-year-old client, a first time offender facing 20 years in jail, as a "law-abiding person who is the complete opposite of the greedy, master-mind drug dealer that the government portrays him to be."

"Rather Mr. Kamra is a motivated student, a caring neighbor, a giving friend, and a loving family-member," she wrote.

To the people who know him best, Lin wrote, Kamra, who spent the past three years wearing an ankle monitor under house arrest, is "an honest person who has integrity."

In the sentencing memorandum, Lin described the strain her client's been under for the past five years:

"For Mr. Kamra and his family, this prosecution started in April 2016 when law enforcement executed its search warrant," Lin wrote. That was the year before Kamra made his campaign video with Krasner.

"Since that time, nearly five years ago, they [Kamra and his family] have been unable to sleep properly and have poured resources into Mr. Kamra’s defense," Lin wrote. "He has been unable to get his new business off the ground and he has paused any plans to get a doctorate."

In a March 9, 2021 ruling denying a motion for a new trial, U.S. District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick didn't put much stock in Kamra's protestations of innocence.

"Defendant portrayed that he was unaware that the oxycodone scripts were fraudulent; that he believed Fisher had treated the patients named in the scripts; that he is a hard-working, law-abiding, pharmacy employee who was simply doing his job," the judge wrote. 

"And that part of his job was to defer to medically trained professionals such as Fisher regarding decisions about medications and filling of prescriptions," the judge wrote.

But after Dr. Fisher decided to plead guilty and cooperate with the government, he secretly recorded on video two meetings that took place in March 2016 between himself, Kamra and Brown.

"The purpose of the meetings was for Fisher to write prescriptions for pills that defendant had already sold to Brown," the judge wrote. During the first meeting, Kamra and Brown were seen on video telling Dr. Fisher "what names and dates to put on Oxycodone scripts," the judge wrote.

"Fisher asks whether the scripts are for pills already dispensed and Defendant responds, “yeah," the judge wrote. At a second meeting, Kamra, Brown, and Dr. Fisher "again discuss backdating prescriptions to create a paper file for Oxycodone pills that defendant already sold to Brown," the judge wrote.

On the second video, Kamra "is heard telling Fisher what names and dates to write on scripts," the judge wrote. "According to Brown, when Defendant sold him oxycodone pills, he placed all the pills in one unlabeled bottle. That way, if Brown was ever caught, the pills could not be traced back to Campus Pharmacy."

At trial, a financial analyst testified on behalf of the government that Kamra deposited approximately $275,000 of cash into his various bank accounts from January 1, 2013 through April 6, 2017," the judge wrote. "This was in addition to the salary he received from Campus Pharmacy by way of direct deposit."

On the witness stand, Kamra, testifying in his own defense, claimed that the cash he deposited derived not from the pill mill, but from his family, who brought him cash whenever they came to visit.

But according to the judge, Kamra's explanation of where the cash came from "simply doesn't add up."

According to the evidence produced at trial, Kamra got visits in Philadelphia from family members in 2013, 2014, and 2015, who gave him a total of $27,000.

Kamra also visited India in 2011, 2013, and 2015, and brought back a total of between $21,000 and $24,000.

"Adding all these cash payments together does not account for even half of the amount of cash deposits that were made by defendant into his bank accounts during the course of the conspiracy," the judge wrote. 

On March 12th of this year, Kamra was sentenced to 18 months in jail followed by three years of supervised release.