Houston Pharmacists, Doctor Charged

What Happened

Federal authorities announced in December 2021 the arrests of three Houston-area pharmacists, a doctor and a pharmacy technician accused of running Chrisco, Keystone and Peoples pharmacies and two clinics as pill mills. Prosecutors alleged the pharmacies dispensed nearly four million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills since January 2018. Keystone owner Anthony Obute was indicted; Ophelia Emeakoroha of Peoples and Dr. Shivarajpur Ravi were arrested on criminal complaints; Christopher Obaze and Eric Tubbe were charged in an eight-count indictment over Chrisco. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“Keystone owner and pharmacist-in-charge Anthony Obute, 46, of Houston, was indicted yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas”
U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Dec 21, 2021

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, Dec 21, 2021

Case at a Glance

Setting: Pharmacies and pain clinics
Drug: hydrocodone, oxycodone, carisoprodol
Method: Alleged bulk purchase and sale of high-strength pills to traffickers and illegitimate prescriptions
Status: Arrested and charged by complaint and indictment December 2021; charges are allegations

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

What this case shows

Where this record connects to the site's working material. Links are chosen from the case's setting, drug and method fields.

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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.

Conference presentations

2025 — The Rounding Revolution: A High-Tech Approach to Diversion Prevention (with Emily Spiceland, PharmD)
2024 — No Pill Left Behind: Strategies for Comprehensive Drug Accountability (with Eric Andrews)
2022 — Ready for My Close Up! Implementing, Maintaining, and Expanding Drug Diversion Prevention Cameras (with Jeremy Quinn, Shawn Young, and John Bailey)

Other professional engagement

Faculty, ASHP Drug Diversion Certificate
Speaker, Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA)
Published author, Pharmacy Purchasing & Products

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

The assessment items, weighting, and case registry behind this site come from that operational background — building and running a diversion prevention program, not from vendor marketing. Every tool here is free, requires no signup, and is based on published regulatory and professional standards (DEA, Joint Commission, ASHP, CDC).

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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

Houston Pharmacists, Doctor Charged in Opioid Pill Mills