Virginia Doctor Sentenced to 40 Years

What Happened

Joel Smithers, a Martinsville, Virginia doctor, was sentenced on September 2, 2025, to 40 years in federal prison after a jury trial in December 2024 found him guilty of maintaining a place for illegally distributing controlled substances and 466 counts of illegally prescribing Schedule II controlled substances. Prosecutors said he opened his office in August 2015 and prescribed controlled substances, including oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl, to every patient, taking in over $700,000. He had been convicted in 2019, but a new trial was ordered after a Supreme Court change in the law. DEA revoked his registration in 2019.

“466 counts of illegally prescribing Schedule II controlled substances”
U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Sep 2, 2025

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, Sep 2, 2025

Case at a Glance

Setting: Private medical practice
Drug: Oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl
Method: Illegally prescribing Schedule II controlled substances to every patient
Status: Sentenced September 2, 2025 to 40 years in federal prison after December 2024 retrial conviction

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.

Share: LinkedIn X Facebook

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).

Full author bio and credentials →

Would your controls have caught this?

The free self-assessment scores your own controls: 8 sections, 63 weighted items, a score for each section, and a PDF you can take to your committee. No account or login.

Start the free assessment

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

Virginia Doctor Sentenced to 40 Years for Opioid Prescribing