Doctor indicted on diet drug fraud charge

A doctor responsible for determining whether patients who had taken the once-popular diet drug fen-phen were eligible for compensation has been indicted on charges of fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Fen-phen, a combination of fenfluarmine and phentermine, was taken off the market in 1997 after some of the millions of people who took it developed serious heart damage. Wyeth, the company that had marketed it, established a trust to pay benefits to the people who had been injured.

In the indictment, Dr. Abdur Razzak Tai, 77, is accused of participating in a scheme to submit fraudulent fen-phen claims.