Md. doctors charged with trying to give Russia medical info on home detention awaiting trial
BALTIMORE - The doctors accused of providing private patient medical information to an FBI informant they believed to be a member of the Russian government are home awaiting trial.
Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist Dr. Anna Gabrielian and her spouse Dr. Jamie Henry, a major in the U.S. Army, were arrested Thursday at their Rockville, Md. home, just outside Washington, D.C.
"I kept saying to myself 'What is going on here?' This is strange because this is a very quiet neighborhood," neighbor Lou Kuntz said, describing several federal law enforcement cars on his street.
Dr. Gabrielian is released on a $500,000 unsecured bond and home confinement, a "24-hour-a-day lock-down," per a court order. She and Dr. Henry had to surrender passports and weapons. The two have location monitoring technology" that includes an "exclusion zone that will trigger an alarm if w/in 5 miles" of local airports BWI, DCA, or IAD.
The couple was named in an eight-count indictment Wednesday on charges of conspiracy and disclosure of medical information.
Federal prosecutors allege Dr. Gabrielian met with an undercover FBI agent in a Baltimore hotel Aug. 17 who she believed was associated with the Russian government.
According to the indictment, Dr. Gabrielian was "motivated by patriotism toward Russia," and offered up medical information "for something tactically advantageous." She and Dr. Henry met with that agent two weeks later and provided medical information or prescription information on seven patients, all with ties to the U.S. military, court documents say.
"What these two individuals were thinking is that the Russians would want that, put clearly and succinctly, to blackmail U.S. intelligence officers," Michael Greenberger, the director of the University of Maryland's Carey School of Law Center for Health and Homeland Security, said. "This complaint seems to me to be very much and open and shut case."
