Texas Doctor Found Guilty For Illegally Distributing Millions Of Opioid Pills

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal jury in Texas found a physician guilty of unlawfully distributing over a million pills of opioids and other controlled substances from a Houston-area clinic that operated as a pill mill, the Justice Department announced Monday.

Dr. Barbara Marino, 65, of Tomball, was the sole prescribing physician at Angels Clinica, where she prescribed oxycodone, hydrocodone, and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol despite no legitimate medical purpose. The clinic accepted only cash and charged based on the prescriptions.

“Medical physicians who exploit their prescribing authority for profit over patient care break an inherent trust with their patients and we will hold them accountable,” Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division said in a statement. “The Department of Justice remains committed to protecting the public from dangerous and unlawful distribution of controlled substances, especially when the drug dealer is a doctor.”

DEA Assistant Administrator Cheri Oz said patients put their trust and lives into the hands of medical and health care professionals.

“The highly addictive, dangerous misused drugs in this case—oxycodone and hydrocodone—are meant to treat pain, not cause it,” Oz said. “DEA remains relentless in our pursuit of those who poison our communities and exploit our health care system, all to line their own pockets with the profit from other’s pain.”

Prosecutors noted that many patients were delivered by street-level “crew leaders” or “runners” who then filled the prescriptions and peddled the pills. Marino received over $400,000 in less than a year for writing the scripts, while ignoring red flags outlined in Texas pharmacy board guidance, prescribing the strongest short-acting versions of the drugs to nearly every patient.

In the trial, jurors heard of a pregnant woman in her third trimester who received the opioid-muscle relaxer combination, and a patient diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The jury found Marino guilty of one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and four counts of distributing a controlled substance. She could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison per count.

At Marino’s trial, an OB/GYN testified to the dangers to the pregnant patient and her unborn child. The prosecutor argued in closing arguments that the woman “didn’t go to her doctor, she went to her drug dealer.”

The DEA investigated the case, and the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Fraud Section trial attorneys prosecuted the case, along with the Texas Attorney General’s Office Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. Sentencing for Marino has not yet been scheduled.