On April 17, 2019, the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force (ARPO) arrested and indicted 53 medical professionals in 10 federal districts in 6 states. The indictments included 31 doctors, 7 pharmacists, 8 nurse practitioners, and 7 other licensed medical professionals. ARPO, made up of 14 prosecutors and more federal agents, began working in December, 2018. They promise more arrests in the future.

“Reducing the illicit supply of opioids is a crucial element of President Trump’s plan to end this public health crisis”  said HHS Secretary Alex Azar.  “It is also vital that Americans struggling with addiction have access to treatment and that patients who need pain treatment do not see their care disrupted, which is why federal and local public health authorities have coordinated to ensure these needs are met in the wake of this enforcement operation.”

So do these attacks on legitimate medical professionals prescribing legitimate medications to legitimate patients reduce the illicit supply of opioids?  Of course not! It increases it! Chronic pain patients are thrown to the street for self-treatment, in spite of the HHS Secretary’s empty words above.

So let me show you what the government is doing to doctors across the region—most creating crime where there is none, for the financial benefit of the agencies, agents, and courts.

The entire Controlled Substances Act can be found HERE.   Now for an explanation of how this law is being used illegally, you might be able to get my ebook Using the Law Illegally Against Doctors for free if it is still available down below in my author box.  If not, you can buy my ebook HERE.  And if you think that $2.99 is too much to spend to learn how doctors are being criminalized illegally, you should be ashamed.  It cost me my livelihood, my family, and basically my life for over 2 years in prison. It’s costing other innocent physicians their entire life behind bars. If you are a doctor, you might end up spending a lot more than $2.99. Another way to get a copy of this important work is to be a member of Doctorsofcourage. Members get all publications over the course of their membership.  This is the gift for month #2.  At the bottom of the post is a button to take you to the membership levels.

Controlled Substance Act Laws on which charges are based:

Title 21 U.S.C. The Controlled Substances Act

• 841 (a)(1) states:

Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally—
to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance;

But to show that this statute is referring to illegal controlled substances, not prescribed medications, notice that all of the penalties refer to grams of actual illegal drugs.  In order to use the sentencing guidelines against medical professionals, the legal pharmaceuticals have to be converted to an equivalent amount of marijuana. And the courts allow this to happen! Shows the collusion.  More about the illegal drug connection can be found on page 16 of the ebook.

Notice the statute starts with “Except as authorized by this subchapter”.  Well, folks—DOCTORS ARE AUTHORIZED! Here is the statute:

Section 1306.03 Persons entitled to issue prescriptions.

            An individual practitioner who is authorized to prescribe by the state in which he is licensed, and registered.

So now we get into the Law pertaining to prescriptions. Here are the statutes covered.

The most general charge against physicians is infraction of Section 1306.04 governing the issuance of prescriptions:

Section 1306.04 Purpose of issue of prescription.

A prescription for a controlled substance to be effective must be issued for a legitimate medical purpose by an individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his professional practice. The responsibility for the proper prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances is upon the prescribing practitioner, but a corresponding responsibility rests with the pharmacist who fills the prescription. An order purporting to be a prescription issued not in the usual course of professional treatment or in legitimate and authorized research is not a prescription within the meaning and intent of section 309 of the Act (21 U.S.C. 829) and the person knowingly filling such a purported prescription, as well as the person issuing it, shall be subject to the penalties provided for violations of the provisions of law relating to controlled substances.

The government simply turned this statute around by saying in the indictment that the physician “distributed and dispensed outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.”

This is the entire basis for the attacks on doctors—the government’s overreach into what is considered “legitimate medical purpose”. Even though the Controlled Substance Act states in §802(56)(C) that it is the practitioner that determines what is “legitimate medical purpose”, US Attorneys and DEA agents with barely more than a high school education are now stating (without any proof, I might add) that the doctor’s medical decision-making is not “legitimate medical practice”. But when cornered on the witness stand, as was done in the trial of Dr. John Patrick Couch in Mobile, AL, when asked to delineate what is “legitimate medical practice” in pain management, the DEA agent said he couldn’t answer that question because “he wasn’t a doctor.”  BINGO!!!  ONLY THE DOCTOR CAN DETERMINE WHAT IS LEGITIMATE!

The government is also using this statute to attack pharmacists. This is being done to force pharmacists to testify against the targeted physicians.  In one despicable case in this group, a pharmacy tech has been charged, and copped a plea, for dispensing a controlled substance without legitimate purpose.  So now the person taking your script at the pharmacy counter and putting the data in the computer, with no pharmaceutical knowledge or training, is being held responsible for the prescription’s “legitimate medical purpose”.  How much farther are we going to allow this rogue DOJ and Judicial Branch to corrupt the law?

The establishment of this statute as referring to only doctors selling scripts on the street corner as the only thing that would be an infraction has been stated multiple times by the Supreme Court in decisions. (see the Case Law in the ebook).  But that doesn’t seem to matter to US Attorneys or the Courts today. They are all part of the agenda.

• • 846. Attempt and conspiracy

Any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this subchapter shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.

Conspiracy has become such a vague concept in court that there virtually isn’t a defense for it. So this is an easy charge to convict on without just cause.

• • 856. Maintaining drug-involved premises

(a) Unlawful acts

Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful to—

(1) knowingly open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily, for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance;

(2) manage or control any place, whether permanently or temporarily, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee, occupant, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit from, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the place for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.

This statute was amended in 2003—Pub. L. 108–21, §608(b)(2), substituting “Maintaining drug-involved premises” for “Establishment of manufacturing operations”. So with the turn of attention by the DEA and DOJ in 1998 to legitimate pharmaceutical opioids, and their intent to use the Controlled Substance Act against legitimate physicians, the statute pointing to a site where illegal drugs are being manufactured was amended in 2003 so that legitimate doctor’s offices could be called a “drug-involved premise”. This amendment was simply tacked on to a child trafficking law in the section “Miscellaneous Provisions” called Sec. 608. Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act.  Sneaky devils. The Bill was called the “PROTECT Act” and was sponsored by Senator Hatch Orrin (R-UT) and cosponsored by 9 senators.

The most despicable action of the DOJ in these attacks is their use of propaganda to convict physicians without law.  According to ex post facto law, article 1 of Criminal Law states that no act is punishable without a pre-existing law.  And yet in most of the cases being charged, the indictment brings up the CDC guidelines like this:

On March 16, 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC) issued CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.

But the charges against many of the practitioners are for prescriptions written before 2016.  But that won’t matter to the jury, and breaking the law obviously doesn’t matter to the government.  Immunity needs to be withdrawn and these prosecutors need to be indicted. These are crimes against humanity.

They also used propaganda in the press against the combinations of drugs in the indictments by writing:

It was well known that the combination of high-dose opioids and benzodiazepines (e.g., alprazolam) in any dose had a significant impact upon the risk of patient intoxication and overdose. The risk of intoxication and overdose was increased when treatment included other central nervous system depressants, muscle relaxants (e.g., carisoprodol), anticonvulsants, and short-acting opioid analgesics. For a treating physician to prescribe these combinations for a legitimate medical purpose, the physician needed to determine, at a minimum, that the benefits of the drugs outweighed the risk(s) to the patient’s life.

In actuality, the side effect of opioids being a nervous or respiratory system depressant wears off after a short time, and a person taking an opioid with a benzodiazepine chronically is not at risk for death from the combination if taken as prescribed.  But the misinformation by the government is not appropriately contradicted by the defense experts.

And so the chart below gives you some data about the various people charged, and what their status is.  What is needed, however, is to get the word to the American public that will bring these illegal charges to an end, and get the government out of the doctor’s office.  I, Linda Cheek MD, can do that through defense witnessing or speaking to groups live or virtual across the country. If you aren’t supporting DoctorsofCourage and getting me to speak in your area, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Now in reviewing the indictments, I see that three of the defendants actually did break the CSA and are probably guilty, if the government actually states true and not adulterated facts in the indictment. These are individuals who had a drug problem themselves and wrote scripts to fake patients for their own use.  But what we need to realize is that drug abuse is an illness, and should be treated as such, not criminalized. And the sad thing is, most of those indicted will either cop a plea or be convicted in court, if the knowledge we provide is not spread.

Guilty US Attorneys: Attorney General Barr and Secretary Azar were joined in the announcement by Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr. for the Eastern District of Kentucky; U.S. Attorney Russell M. Coleman for the Western District of Kentucky; U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman for the Southern District of Ohio; U.S. Attorney William J. Powell for the Northern District of West Virginia; U.S. Attorney Michael B. Stuart for the Southern District of West Virginia; U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey for the Eastern District of Tennessee; U.S. Attorney Don Cochran for the Middle District of Tennessee; U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee; U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town for the Northern District of Alabama; U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen for the Western District of Virginia; Executive Assistant Director Amy Hess of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch; Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Gary L. Cantrell of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Assistant Administrator John J. Martin of the DEA Diversion Control Division, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Program Integrity (CPI) Alec Alexander.

 

Name	Age	Ethnicity	Specialty	Plea?
Alabama
Celia Lloyd-Turney, MD		Black	Internal Medicine	Feb, 2020
John Cimino, MD		White	OB-GYN	Dec, 2019
Elizabeth Korcz, MD		White	Family Medicine
Marshall Plotka, MD		?Polish	Emergency Medicine
Kentucky
Mohammed Mazumder		Black	Primary care	Sentenced Mar, 2020
Scott Akers, MD		White	PM & R
Denver Tackett, DDS		White	Dentist
Sai Gutti, MD	61	Indian	Anesthesiology, PM
Nitesh Patel		Indian	Compounding Company
Christopher Nelson, MD		Black	Anesthesiology
Gary Green		White	Pharmacist
Ijaz MahoodMD	61	Pakistani	Oncology
Louisiana
Anil Prasad, DO	62	Indian	Neurology
Ohio
Ramond Noschang, MD			Internal Medicine	Oct, 2019
Pennsylvania
Tayha Brown, LPN
Tennessee
Charles Brooks, Jr, MD	61	Black	Family Medicine
Harrison Yang, MD	75	?Asian	Cardiology
Henry Babenco, MD	58	White	Anesthesiology
Steven Mynatt, MD	66	White	PM, Urology
Heather Marks, FNP		White
Bowdoin Smith, DO		White	Family Medicine
Brian Richey, NP
Daniel Seeley, NP
Jonathan White, NP
Darrel Rinehart, MD	64	White	Internal Medicine	Dec, 2019
John Polston		White	Pharmacist
Lawrence Valdez, MD	50	Hispanic	Internal Medicine
Timothy Abbott, DPM			Podiatry	Feb, 2020
Thomas Ballard, III, MD		White	Family Medicine
Britney Petway, NP	33
Charles Alston, MD		Black	Internal Medicine
Jay Shires, MD			Family Medicine
Loran Karlosky, MD			Family Medicine
Mary Ann Bond, NP
Jeffrey Young, NP		White
Alexander Alperovich, MD			Cardiology
Andrew Rudin, MD			Cardiology
Glen Bonifield, Jr	74	White	Pharmacist
Michelle Bonifield		White	Pharm tech	Sept, 2019
Kathryn N. Russell, RN		White		April, 2019
Michael Hellman, MD	72		Anesthesiology
Richard Farmer, MD			Psychiatry
James Litton, NP	43
West Virginia
Chad Poage, DO		White	Orthopedic Surgeon
Marc Spelar, MD	35	White	Psychiatry