Metro Briefs

DISTRICT

Doctor sentenced for Medicare claims

A federal judge yesterday sentenced a prominent longtime District-based AIDS doctor to five months in prison for a scam that netted him more than $150,000 in phony Medicare claims.

Larry Bruni, 55, claimed he injected a blood thinner called Reteplase into one patient more than 100 times, according to court records. It almost always is given just once to heart-attack victims.

Prosecutors said that easily would have killed the patient, but investigators later determined the claims were bogus.

Bruni, one of the District’s leading AIDS doctors in the 1980s, also ordered his two Afghan hounds to bite investigators when they arrived at his home in upstate New York in 2005 to seize his computer.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton also ordered Bruni to pay $154,832 in restitution and serve three years of probation.

Prosecutors said the fraud happened from October 2001 to March 2003.

Circulator bus crashes into building window

An office building was evacuated yesterday in the Georgetown area after a bus crashed through a window.

Fire department spokesman Alan Etter said a D.C. Circulator bus slammed into the Harris Building in the 3300 block of Whitehaven Street Northwest after colliding with a minivan. The building is used by Georgetown University.

Mr. Etter said a woman was inside the building suffered minor injuries when she was hit by debris.

Mr. Etter said that about 200 people were cleared from the four-story brick building, but that there was no serious structural damage.

VMARYLAND

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