St. Louis Physicians Charged Over Illegal Ketamine Infusions in South County

Drs. Mohd Azfar Malik and Asim Muhammad Ali are now facing a host of felonies

Jan 11, 2024 at 12:45 pm

Mohd Azfar Malik and Asim Muhammad Ali allegedly administered illegal ketamine infusions from Cedar Plaza Building in south county. Google Maps

A St. Louis area psychiatrist and medical doctor were both federally indicted yesterday on charges related to what prosecutors say were "illegal ketamine infusions" administered at a south county clinic.

Mohd Azfar Malik, a psychiatrist, and Asim Muhammad Ali, a medical doctor, are now facing a combined 22 counts, with charges including conspiracy to illegally distribute controlled substances, maintaining a drug-involved premises and conspiracy to commit medical fraud.

Prosecutors say that Malik operated a practice called Psych Care Consultants, and that he had proper DEA authorization to administer ketamine to patients at some of his offices. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that is increasingly used to treat severe depression, anxiety and other serious mental health illnesses.

Ali, the medical doctor, did not have the proper registration to administer ketamine but yet he did so using Malik's.

Ali saw patients at a suite in the Cedar Plaza Building off Tesson Ferry in south county, a building where Malik also for a time maintained an office. In order for Ali to lawfully administer the drug, Malik needed to be in the room with him to supervise.

But prosecutors say that Malik believed it was enough to just "say hi" to patients over the phone and then hand them off to Ali.

"In fact, following the commencement of the coronavirus disease pandemic in early 2020, Dr. Malik rarely ever came into the Cedar Plaza Building, and was sometimes out of town while Dr. Ali was conducting ketamine infusions," the indictment says.

The illegal administration of ketamine started in 2020, prosecutors say, and continued until about March 2023. Eventually, Ali also administered Spravato, a nasal spray that delivers a more potent version of ketamine. Again, Ali did so using Malik's registration.

This isn't the first time Ali has been charged with medical-related wrongdoing.

As he was allegedly illegally administering ketamine, he and two other area doctors were also under indictment for illegally writing hundreds of prescriptions for painkillers, including fentanyl, for patients they had not examined. He was indicted on those charges in February 2020 and is set to go to trial for that case next month.

UPDATE: Mohd Azfar Malik has retained prominent defense attorney Scott Rosenblum as his lawyer. Rosenblum told the RFT this afternoon that, "Dr. Malik is innocent. He looks forward to contesting these allegations and upholding the sterling reputation he has built while faithfully serving his patients over the course of his 37 year career in psychiatry."