In February 2025, federal prosecutors announced charges against Memphis gynecologic oncologist Dr. Sanjeev Kumar in a press release the Justice Department has since retracted. The Travel Act counts that generated the headlines were dismissed. What remained were device and billing charges — and a jury convicted him on 40 of 46 counts. He was sentenced to 240 months. He reports to prison after an October 2 restitution hearing. JP Maroney and Stephen Keller sit down with him before he goes. FULL SHOW NOTES Dr. Sanjeev Kumar is 45 years old, Mayo Clinic-trained in gynecologic oncology, and was sentenced on July 8, 2026 to 240 months in federal prison — twenty years — by Chief U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman. He is free on bond pending an October 2 restitution hearing, after which the court is expected to set a report date. He is appealing. This episode was recorded five weeks before that hearing. JP Maroney and Stephen Keller — co-founder of the Justice Restoration Foundation and author of Pay to Play — spend just over an hour and a half walking Dr. Kumar through the whole arc: the practice he built in Memphis, the April 2024 FBI search, the arrest outside a hospital he was walking into to operate, the indictment, the trial, and the theory of the case that turned a gynecologic procedure into a federal sex offense allegation. What the record shows. A federal grand jury indicted Kumar in February 2025. Then-Acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren announced the charges, which included enticing four victims to travel interstate to engage in illegal sexual activity under the Travel Act. The Justice Department's press release page for that announcement now carries a notice that the comments and quotations in its February 28, 2025 version have been retracted. The Associated Press reported on March 31, 2025 that Fondren had been fired by the White House. On October 17, 2025, a federal judge dismissed 17 of the then-36 counts, including all four Travel Act counts — holding that "sexual activity" under the statute requires conduct undertaken for sexual gratification, which the indictment had not alleged — and striking a group of FDA counts as duplicitous. None of the sexual-misconduct allegations reached the jury. What went to trial in January 2026 was a device and billing case. Prosecutors alleged that between September 2019 and April 2024, Kumar performed more than 15,000 hysteroscopy-with-biopsy procedures on Medicare and Medicaid patients using improperly reprocessed devices, and billed as though the procedures were medically necessary and the devices new or properly reprocessed. The jury convicted on 40 of 46 counts — 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 of misbranding, and 6 of health care fraud — and hung on the remainder. Announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said Kumar had used his medical license to target a vulnerable population of women and was motivated by greed, and that no punishment could achieve justice in the case. What Dr. Kumar says. He maintains his innocence and disputes the government's theory at its foundation. In this conversation he says the FBI referred its findings to the Tennessee medical board after the April 2024 search; that the board conducted its own months-long investigation and dismissed the matter in September 2024 in a report he describes as running roughly 490 pages; and that the trial court admitted the body of that report but excluded the letter stating the board's conclusion. He says his motion for a change of venue was denied despite prospective jurors visibly reacting to the pretrial coverage during selection. He says he testified for two days and the government did not cross-examine him. On the devices themselves, he points to written FDA reprocessing guidance and corresponding CDC guidance listing exceptions for facilities other than acute care hospitals and for opened-but-unused single-use devices — and to the government's own filing stating it was not required to prove actual use of any device. He says an FDA reviewer testified under oath that the agency has never cleared a hysteroscope for use without sterilization, contradicting the manufacturer's instructions for use, and that when his team raised the conflict with the FDA, the agency wrote back that the instructions for use control. He says the seized devices sat in government custody for roughly eighteen months, were broken and incomplete when shown to the jury, tested negative for blood three times, and were never DNA-tested — leaving no device tied to any specific patient. The Justice Impact Show has not independently verified these claims. They are Dr. Kumar's account, given on the record, ahead of an appeal in which they will be tested. The part that reaches past this one case. In the last half hour, Kumar makes an argument aimed squarely at other physicians: that "medical necessity" is being adjudicated retroactively, years after care was delivered, by paid chart reviewers who never saw the patient. He works through the colonoscopy math — millions performed annually to find a fraction of that number of cancers — and asks what happens when a negative result is recoded as an unnecessary procedure five years later. His warning is that the doctor who believes robust compliance infrastructure makes him safe is describing exactly who he was two years ago. Keller frames it through the thesis of Pay to Play: that federal cases of this kind rarely begin with the government deciding on its own to pursue someone. Whatever you conclude about the conviction, the sequence is on the record: a retracted DOJ press release, dismissed headline counts, a state medical board that closed its file, and a twenty-year sentence. CHAPTER MARKERS 00:00 — Cold open04:38 — A day in the life10:51 — Mayo to Memphis: the cases nobody wanted19:22 — Nine thousand patients, no one turned away23:07 — April 16, 2024: the FBI is at the clinic24:36 — The arrest31:11 — "A predator in white coat"41:20 — How a hysteroscopy became a federal sex offense46:07 — The medical board closes the case49:13 — Why he chose to testify54:54 — The FDA and CDC safe harbors64:03 — The seized devices and the DNA test that wasn't run71:41 — A message to his patients77:57 — The warning to physicians85:36 — "That doctor was me, up until two years ago"93:52 — Closing thoughts LINKS Dr. Sanjeev Kumar Website: drsanjeevkumarsurgeon.comJustice Restoration Foundation justicerestoration.orgJustice Impact justiceimpact.comStephen Keller Pay to Play — stephen-keller.comPrimary sources referenced in this episode U.S. Attorney's Office, W.D. Tenn. — February 28, 2025 indictment announcement (note the retraction of comments and quotations)U.S. Attorney's Office, W.D. Tenn. — July 8, 2026 sentencing announcementFDA guidance on reprocessing of reusable medical devicesCDC guideline for disinfection and sterilization in healthcare facilitiesEPISODE KEYWORDS / TAGS criminal justice reform, federal prosecution, healthcare fraud, FDA, medical device regulation, physician prosecution, Memphis, gynecologic oncology, wrongful conviction, appeal, prosecutorial overreach, Justice Restoration Foundation, white collar, medical necessity, hysteroscopy
