BATON ROUGE — A Baton Rouge-area doctor spoke on Tuesday at the sentencing of a former friend and classmate, Samrat Mukherjee, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to false statements. Mukherjee, a former paramedic who told his employer and others that he was a licensed doctor, was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
Dr. Loi Le, a physician within the Ochsner Health System, spoke at the sentencing about Mukherjee’s actions, saying that what Mukherjee did “was not a victimless crime.”
“Over the years, Mr. Mukherjee treated countless patients while falsely representing himself as a licensed physician under the alias “Dr. Samrat Mukherjee,”” Le, who had gone to LSU alongside Mukherjee, said.
More:
• Doctor “busted” fired paramedic nearly a decade ago claiming he was a medical student
• Paramedic fired after allegedly claiming he was a doctor
• “He treated my 3-yr-old daughter as a doctor”
He explained that in one case, Mukherjee treated a three-year-old child with a skull fracture and told her to walk around, which Le said demonstrated his “profound lack of medical understanding and judgment.”
The child was not injured, but Le said “the potential consequences could have been tragic” because he was endangering the patient without a neurological evaluation.
“Earning the title of “physician” requires years of rigorous education, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication—12 years, in my case, encompassing undergraduate studies, medical school, and residency. Mr. Mukherjee, however, bypassed that commitment in twelve seconds,” Le said in his victim impact statement.
Le added that he had been friends with Mukherjee from 2006 until 2022, when he learned about his friend’s fraud. In his statement, Le said that his former friend was able to assume his professional identity and create a fake medical degree using Le’s National Prescription Identifier (NPI) number as his own. That’s the number doctors use to call in prescriptions instead of writing it out on a prescription pad.
“In mere moments, he gained the ability to impersonate a physician and prescribe medications—actions that put patients’ lives at risk and undermine public trust in the medical profession.”
From around May 2019 through November 2022, Mukherjee called in prescriptions to various pharmacies for himself and others using another’s NPI.
Mukherjee worked for Acadian Ambulance for seven years, and was fired in December 2022 for fraudulently asserting himself as a doctor during part of that time. In March 2025, he pleaded guilty to false statements and was sentenced on Nov. 4, 2025.
Le told UWK that he was satisfied with the judge’s sentencing of Mukherjee: “I am grateful for the sentence handed down by Judge deGravelles today. This outcome reaffirms that justice has prevailed, and I hope it will serve to protect the integrity and licenses of all healthcare providers moving forward.”
Download the Unfiltered with Kiran app from the Apple App Store and Google Play to stay updated on the latest news across the Capital area.
Support UWK and its mission to deliver The News You Deserve. Unfiltered. Become a monthly patron on Patreon today!
