Chicago Pain Clinic Owner Sentenced

What Happened

Ranjit Wahi, 78, of Chicago, owner of Midwest Physician Pain Center, was sentenced in March 2026 to 29 months in prison for conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and methadone. According to his plea agreement, from 2019 through November 18, 2022, patients paid his receptionist, Judith Harskey, cash for prescriptions he had signed in advance, without seeing him or another doctor. A November 2022 search recovered 541 blank signed prescriptions. Harskey pleaded guilty in 2024 and was sentenced to 36 months. Wahi faces one year of supervision after release.

“Wahi conspired with others to dispense controlled substances, including oxycodone and methadone, outside the scope of professional practice”
U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Mar 19, 2026

Related Guidance

15 Red Flags of Drug Diversion — Behavioral and transactional indicators of diversion.
Investigation Playbook — How to investigate suspected diversion inside an organization.

Sources

U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Mar 19, 2026

Case at a Glance

Setting: Pain clinic (Midwest Physician Pain Center)
Drug: Oxycodone and methadone
Method: Pre-signed prescriptions sold for cash by a receptionist without patients seeing a doctor
Status: Sentenced March 2026 to 29 months in prison and one year of supervision

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

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Last reviewed: September 2026 · Educational content, not legal advice.

About the author

DivertGuard is built and maintained by Alex Rodriguez, MHIIM, CPhT (also known as Jesus Rodriguez) — a drug diversion prevention program manager with more than a decade in pharmacy practice, including direct responsibility for a health-system controlled substance diversion prevention program.

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2025 — The Rounding Revolution: A High-Tech Approach to Diversion Prevention (with Emily Spiceland, PharmD)
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Credentials

Doctorate candidate — Doctor of Health Informatics (DHI), Rutgers University, School of Health Professions; research on health data analytics and the prediction of cognitive decline
MHIIM — master's in health informatics, University of Tennessee Health Science Center (2019–2021)
CPhT — Certified Pharmacy Technician, with 10+ years of pharmacy practice across retail, hospice, compounding, home-health, and hospital settings

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Related Resources

Diversion Settlements & Fines

Settlements, civil penalties and criminal fines paid by hospitals and pharmacies in documented drug diversion cases, with the amount, year and primary source for each

Penalty Outcomes in the Case Records

Counts of the outcomes the registry records state: prison, probation, fines, licence actions and restitution, with stated sentence lengths by band and by drug class

Registry Insights: Sentences, Fines, States and Outcomes

Sentence lengths, fines and restitution, cases per 100,000 pharmacists by state, and plea and licence outcomes, each counted from the case records with its n, plus charts of cases by year, state and drug class

Chicago Pain Clinic Owner Sentenced in Oxycodone Conspiracy