Jacksonville Dr. Om Kapoor kept his Florida medical license despite a 2021 felony conviction after a patient said Kapoor masturbated during an exam. Kapoor tried to argue that he should keep his license after pleading guilty to assault after a boy accused him of rape, because, Kapoor maintained, he did not actually rape the child.
Administrative Judge Lawrence Stevenson and the Florida Board of Medicine disagreed with Kapoor. The board followed Stevenson’s recommendation from a June hearing and suspended Kapoor on Sept. 3. The suspension will remain in effect for at least two years after his probation for the criminal charge expires. According to the Florida Dept. of Corrections website, Kapoor is scheduled to begin probation on March 24, 2026.
That probation began when Kapoor was sentenced in Duval County Superior Court on March 24, 2023, one year, five months and ten days before the board suspended Kapoor.
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Although his online licensing profile with the Florida Department of Health lists his status as “Retired,” the administrative law hearing report states that Kapoor, 54, “has expressed a desire to return to active medical practice.”
Take the napkin and leave the office
After receiving his Florida license on April 10, 2008, Kapoor began working as an infectious disease specialist at Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville and operating an infectious disease practice. In 2012, the medical center’s risk manager sent a report to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office alleging that Kapoor “engaged in sexual misconduct with a 20-year-old male patient.”
No arrests have been made. The Florida Department of Health said no one notified the agency of this report.
The mention of the 2012 allegations stems from emergency measures Kapoor took in 2018. The measure was taken after the ministry learned of Kapoor’s arrest in December 2017.
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According to an arrest report and the restraining order, Kapoor told his 34-year-old male patient in July 2017 that he had Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness. The patient saw Kapoor for follow-up tests, and on Dec. 17, 2017, Kapoor told him that he had tested positive for Lyme disease again. Kapoor asked him to drop his pants and underwear and lean over the exam table. Kapoor later asked him to “spread his buttocks.”
“After several minutes,” the restriction order said, “(the patient) heard [Kapoor] “breathe heavily and groan.”
The patient turned and screamed when he saw Kapoor pleasuring himself into a napkin. Undeterred by his patient’s screams, Kapoor emptied the napkin and then threw it away. The patient retrieved the napkin from the trash and went straight to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
A JSO detective wrote in the arrest report: ‘I asked [Kapoor] if there was any reason that the victim should have a napkin with his semen in his possession, and he said no.”
Although the prosecution of this case lasted more than three years and became news throughout the state, Kapoor was able to continue his work. The only restrictions in the restraining order prevented him from seeing male patients without a licensed health care provider in the room.
On September 9, 2021, a jury found Kapoor not guilty of assault, but guilty of exposure of genitals. Kapoor was sentenced to 12 months in prison.
Kapoor’s motion for a new trial based on “ineffective counsel” by his attorney Nah-Deh E.W. Simmons was denied by Duval County Judge Robin Lanigan in December 2023:
“The evidence presented at the hearing shows that [Kapoor} and his trial counsel,Mr. Simmons, discussed trial strategy and, in fact, were successful on one of the two counts based on that strategy. While some decisions made between [Kapoor] and his counsel at trial differ from what other defense attorneys have argued. The evidence does not show that Mr. Simmons was ineffective in representing [Kapoor]… “
At the time of that ruling, Kapoor had already pleaded guilty to another criminal charge.
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A sleepover, keys and a cell phone
Testimony before the administrative law judge said that Kapoor, his wife and son became friends with another family around 2010 or 2011 because of shared religious beliefs. The other family included two children, a son who was a few years older than the Kapoors’ son and about the same age as him.
Their mother testified that Om Kapoor was “extremely concerned” about her son, “spoiling him and giving him sweets.”
But it wasn’t until 2020, the mother said, that her son told her she wouldn’t trust him if he told her that Dr. Kapoor had raped him.
The mother testified that she believed her son had been trying to tell her for some time but did not know how to say it. She believed that it was only then that he matured enough to understand what Dr. Kapoor had done to him.
She said that when the son was 9 years old, they had important interviews in the process of getting their green cards. Kapoor, she said, told her son to stay home with him because the children were too young to go to the interviews.
The boy told detectives with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office that after he went to bed, Kapoor climbed into bed with him, pulled down his underwear and raped him. He said he stopped the sexual assault by pretending to wake up from a nightmare. He said Kapoor ran out of the room, throwing his keys and cellphone on the bedroom floor. At breakfast the next day, he said, he gave the cellphone and keys back to Kapoor and told him where he had found them.
Kapoor and his wife, according to the administrative judge’s report, “consistently” denied to the administrative judge that the boy had ever spent the night with them.
“[Kapoor’s wife] testified that no child outside of her family had ever stayed overnight with her,” the report said. “She stated that Indian culture and tradition frown upon leaving children in someone’s home without their parents.”
She also denied that Dr. Kapoor showed any special favouritism towards (the boy). She stated that Dr. Kapoor is a caring, loving and affectionate person and treats all children with love and affection.
During the administrative law hearing, Kapoor suggested that the boy accused him of rape because he had been punished for spraying potpourri in Kapoor’s son’s eyes at a party. The masturbation case in the local media, Kapoor said, gave the boy the idea.
The day before Kapoor was set to go on trial on two counts of sexual battery, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, prosecutors offered a plea deal — one count of sexual battery, no further incarceration beyond the 313 days he had already spent in the county jail. Kapoor accepted the deal, noting that he was pleading guilty “because it is in my best interest” and not because he was “guilty of the offense set forth in this plea agreement.”
Kapoor’s criminal defense attorney, Michael Ceballos, testified that the plea agreement showed the weakness of the prosecution’s case, but “there are no guarantees in the jury system and Dr. Kapoor faced a mandatory life sentence,” the hearing transcript said.
“Dr. Kapoor argues that his ‘best interest’ plea somehow disassociates the crime of assault from his medical practice,” Administrative Law Judge Stevenson wrote. But while he acknowledges the possible truth of what Ceballos said, “the submission of a ‘best interest’ plea does not change the fact that defendant has pled guilty.”
Moreover, Stevenson said, it is an admission of guilt for abuse where the victim was a child.
Therefore, Stevenson recommended the suspension sentence imposed by the State Medical Council.
