Doctor Drugged by Strippers off the Hook for $135K Tab

A New Jersey cardiologist who got his heart racing with dancers at a strip joint is off the hook for a $135,000 club tab, a Manhattan judge ruled Tuesday.

Dr. Zyad Younan, 44, was the victim of "criminal conduct" after he was drugged by four strippers and bombarded with fraudulent charges, Judge Kelly O'Neill ruled Tuesday,ordering club Scores to drop the six-figure tab.

Scores, the midtown club at which Younan was charged for three nights of private rooms, tips and alcohol in November 2013, pursued legal action to collect the money — even after the strippers pleaded guilty to hustling him.

The strip joint's lawyer claimed that the Scores was not a party in the criminal act by its employees, and it should receive the profits earned from the transaction.

The lawyer also argued that Younan "was in a romantic relationship" with one of the strippers, Karina Pascucci, who posed as a nursing student when she initially picked him up at a Manhattan restaurant, the New York Post reports.

After dates with Pascucci and her "cousin" and "sister," Younan alleged in court documents that he would wake up in a hotel room, unable to remember what happened the previous night.

Prosecutors argued that Pascucci and three other women slipped tranquilizers into the doctor's drinks, then drove him to Scores, where they forged his signature on credit card receipts.

Following the judge's ruling on Tuesday, the Bayshore Community Hospital doctor can move past the scandal, which has plagued him for more than four years.

"Dr. Younan now has a chance to close this chapter of his life and move on," his lawyer, Michael Weinstein, told the Post on Wednesday.

While it was ruled that Younan would not have to pay $135,000 to Scores, he lost a defamation suit he filed against the strip club.

The doctor countersued the club after a Scores representative joked about him to the Post in 2014, after his indecent situation was made public.

"If I had five dancers dancing for me, I'd be in the ICU," Scores rep Steve Sabbath told the outlet at the time. "He's a heart doctor. I guess he's got a good heart."

Photo credit: Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital