Two New York doctors have admitted they took $100,000 in cash payoffs from a medical lab to order lab tests on their patients.

 

Dr. Gary Leeds and Dr. Richard Goldberg told a federal judge in Newark, N.J., that they had accepted the bribes, a U.S. attorney spokesman said Thursday. 

 

The arrest of the two doctors now brings to nine the number of physicians who have pleaded guilty in the growing lab scandal.  

 

More than a dozen executives and workers with Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services in Parsippany have also pleaded guilty. Several convicted workers admit they visited doctors and paid them cash, and have since been naming names of those who took bribes at medical practices across tri-state area.  

 

Goldberg, 60, is from Weston, Conn. and ran a family practice in New York with Dr. Gary Leeds, of Greenwich. The FBI said both doctors ordered and sent more than $1.8 million in lab testing orders to BLS in exchange for kickbacks.  

 

BLS executives admitted they got more than $100 million as a result of bribing area doctors to order unnecessary tests. Law enforcement officials said no patients were put at risk because of the excessive and unnecessary blood tests.

 

Goldberg is a University of Michigan medical school graduate and completed a residency at Duke University. Leeds got his MD from Brown University and did his residency at Georgetown. Both men face up to five years in prison when they are sentenced for the scam they helped run out of their Family Medical Group on West 15th Street.  

 

Defense attorney Aidan O’Connor said the doctors "have accepted responsibility for their actions and are looking forward to moving forward."

 

A receptionist at the Family Medical Group said there was no comment.