Texas Physician Gets 12.5 Years

What Happened

Maryam Qayum, M.D., 68, of Montgomery County, Texas, was sentenced in August 2026 to 12.5 years in prison for operating her Kingwood clinic, Recare Health Clinic, as a cash-only pill mill. She pleaded guilty in March 2026 to conspiracy to unlawfully distribute controlled substances. Court documents state she issued prescriptions for more than 3 million opioid pills, mainly oxycodone and hydrocodone, between 2022 and 2025, often without interacting with the patient. Four others were previously sentenced, including nurse practitioner Tomi-Ko Bowers (96 months) and pharmacist Jared Williams (42 months), owner of Surge Rx, which filled the prescriptions.

“owned, operated, and was the sole prescriber at Recare Health Clinic (Recare)”
U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Aug 5, 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, Aug 5, 2026

Case at a Glance

Setting: Medical clinic (Recare Health Clinic) and pharmacy (Surge Rx)
Drug: Oxycodone, hydrocodone
Method: Sold cash prescriptions to street-level dealers without a legitimate medical purpose, often without seeing the patient
Status: Sentenced August 2026 to 12.5 years in prison after March 2026 guilty plea

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

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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)

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Faculty, ASHP Drug Diversion Certificate
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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

Texas Physician Gets 12.5 Years for Kingwood Pill Mill