What Happened
A physician licensed in New York and previously contracted to work at Erie County Medical Center, Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, and the Monsignor Carr Institute pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute oxycodone, hydrocodone, and amphetamine.
Between January 2014 and February 2018, the physician issued fraudulent controlled-substance prescriptions to a circle of coworkers, friends, and drug-using associates — none of whom were his actual patients. The scheme began when an associate who sold him cocaine started receiving prescriptions written in the names of the associate's relatives; it later expanded to include the associate's girlfriend and other acquaintances, whose names and personal information the physician used to generate prescriptions with no legitimate medical purpose. In exchange, the physician received cocaine, cash or gift cards, and a portion of the diverted pills for his own use.
Over the four-year span, he issued 179 fraudulent prescriptions for Schedule II and Schedule IV controlled substances. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute controlled substances, with sentencing scheduled for July 31, 2020.
What Went Wrong
- A prescriber's DEA registration was used to manufacture prescriptions for people who were never patients. Because the physician had legitimate prescribing authority, the fraudulent scripts could pass initial pharmacy screening without raising immediate red flags.
- Prescriptions were written in the names of people with no documented visit or treatment history. Nothing in the scheme required the named "patients" to have ever been examined, diagnosed, or seen at a clinic.
- The physician's own hospital affiliations gave him professional credibility that helped the scheme go undetected for years. His institutional contracts were not part of the fraud itself, but his standing as a contracted hospital physician was never cross-checked against his private prescribing patterns.
How It Could Have Been Prevented
- Prescription drug monitoring programs should flag prescribers whose patient rosters show low continuity of care — for example, repeated one-off prescriptions to people with no other visit history.
- Pharmacies should question controlled-substance prescriptions for patients who have no other record of treatment with the prescribing physician.
- Hospitals and healthcare systems that contract physicians should periodically audit those physicians' outside prescribing activity against PDMP data, not just their in-facility conduct.
- Require identity verification at the pharmacy counter for high-risk Schedule II prescriptions to reduce the risk of prescriptions issued in someone else's name.
Related Guidance
- 15 Red Flags of Drug Diversion — Indicators including prescribing patterns and identity misuse.
- Regulatory Guide — Prescriber recordkeeping and prescribing-authority requirements.
- Diversion Case Registry — Related prescriber self-diversion and fraudulent-prescription cases.
- Diversion Prevention Checklist — Controls applicable to contracted and credentialed prescribers.