"The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region," U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. "But the Department of Justice is doing its part to help end this crisis." The people charged across 11 federal districts, include 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners, and seven other licensed medical professionals, the Justice Department said. The cases involve more than 350,000 prescriptions for controlled substances across Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia. The arrests were the latest effort to combat the nationwide opioid epidemic. Some 60 doctors, pharmacists and other licensed medical professionals in five states are being charged in connection with illegally prescribing more than 32 million pain pills, in some cases for sexual favors, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The indictments come as some 1,600 cases against the biggest opioid manufacturers in the country are being consolidated and transferred before U.S. Judge Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio. The companies are being accused by numerous counties, cities, states and Native American tribes of downplaying the risks of addiction to doctors and patients while exaggerating their painkillers' benefits. From 1999 to 2017, nearly 218,000 people have died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 130 Americans a day die of an opioid-related overdose, the agency says. The Justice Department said six individuals, including two doctors and three registered pharmacists were charged with several counts, including unlawful distribution of controlled substances and conspiracy to obtain controlled substances by fraud. One arrest made public Wednesday involved a doctor in Kentucky who allegedly prescribed opioids to friends on Facebook, who would then come to his home to pick up prescriptions. Another case involved a doctor in Tennessee who branded himself the "Rock Doc." He allegedly prescribed combinations of dangerous combinations of opioids and benzodiazepines, a class of psychoactive drugs, sometimes in exchange for sexual favors. The Appalachian Regional Prescription Strike Force was formed late last year to help combat the nationwide opioid epidemic. The strike force is working with the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and local public health official, and analyzed databases to identify suspicious prescribing activity. For more on investing in health-care innovation, click here to join CNBC at our Healthy Returns Summit in New York City on May 21. WATCH: Sackler family statement on Purdue Pharma's Oklahoma settlement<doc-sep>Prosecutors also said some health-care professionals prescribed opioids for themselves. An orthopedic surgeon in West Virginia allegedly wrote fraudulent prescriptions for pain pills using the name of a relative and a stolen driver’s license from a colleague. In Pennsylvania, a state outside the targeted region, prosecutors say a nurse filled out phony prescriptions for oxycodone in her name and in the names of others to obtain pills for herself.<doc-sep>CINCINNATI – Federal prosecutors charged 60 physicians and pharmacists Wednesday with illegally handing out opioid prescriptions in what they say is the biggest crackdown of its kind in U.S. history. Some of the doctors are accused of trading drugs for sex, giving prescriptions to Facebook friends without proper medical exams and unnecessarily pulling teeth to justify writing pain pill prescriptions. The list of indicted medical professionals includes podiatrists, orthopedic specialists, dentists, general practitioners and nurse practitioners. Prosecutors said the specialties and methods varied among the accused, but the result in every case was the same: People addicted to pain medication received dangerous amounts of opioids, including oxycodone, methadone and morphine. They said the illegal prescriptions put as many as 32 million pain pills in the hands of patients. A special strike force from the Justice Department began making arrests early Wednesday, primarily in rural areas across Appalachia, which has been especially hard-hit by addiction to heroin and pain medication. The names of many of the accused were not immediately available because they had not yet been arrested. Most of the defendants face charges of unlawful distribution of controlled substances involving prescription opioids. Authorities say they gave out about 350,000 improper prescriptions in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia. April 15:Fentanyl: 10 questions about the hidden drug that kills people every day April 13:What is kratom and what's it made from? Increasingly popular herbal drug tied to over 90 fatal overdoses Prosecutors described the doctors involved as drug dealers rather than medical professionals and said they were seeing a total of about 28,000 patients at the time of their arrests. "If so-called medical professionals are going to behave like drug dealers, we're going to treat them like drug dealers," said Brian Benczkowski, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department. The defendants are accused of writing or filling prescriptions outside the course of medical practices and prescribing them despite having no legitimate medical reasons to do so, he said. Strike force a first-of-its-kind effort The Appalachian Regional Prescription Strike Force included more than 300 investigators from jurisdictions in all five states. Though targeting illegal prescriptions was a priority, federal officials say it wasn't the only goal. In a first-of-its-kind effort, the federal criminal investigators are linking with public health to try to guide those who received the rogue prescriptions to addiction treatment, said Benjamin Glassman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. Glassman said authorities recognize that closing clinics and arresting those who ran them won't solve the addiction problems of the patients who received the prescriptions. to help, he said, a public health official will be stationed at every clinic affected by the arrests. The hope is "when these facilities are taken down, there are resources in place to give the best possible chance for those victims to get proper treatment," Glassman said. "Opioids are the public health and safety crisis of our lifetime," he said. "This innovation, I hope, will be a road map for the future." How the strike force worked the investigation The strike force, which was created to attack the opioid epidemic late in 2018, worked a two-part investigation. First, it used data analytics including prescription data monitoring programs from the states and Medicaid billing to identify potential offenders. Then it followed up with traditional, boots-on-the-ground law enforcement to zero in on suspects. "We wanted to move quickly," Benczkowski said. The investigation went from January to Wednesday. Federal prosecutors said illegal prescriptions are especially devastating to rural communities, where patients often have limited options when seeking medical help. If the doctor those patients see is peddling illegal prescriptions, prosecutors said, the damage to small towns can be dramatic. The arrests Wednesday removed many doctors who "are simply white-coated drug dealers," said J. Douglas Overbey, U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Tennessee. Prosecutors said a physician in Dayton, Ohio, collected $5,000 a month in rent from a pharmacy located in his office, which provided pills after he signed prescriptions. They said another doctor in Alabama charged patients a "concierge fee" of $50 to $600 per visit. Several doctors are accused of signing blank prescriptions and leaving them for their office staff to fill out when they were unavailable or out of town. Unnecessary treatments, teeth pulled for pills The arrests included a doctor in Kentucky who is accused of signing off on prescriptions via Facebook, without ever seeing the patients. Other doctors are accused of handing out pills directly for cash payments, including to pregnant women. The defendant list includes 31 doctors, 22 other licensed medical professionals and seven others who are owners, operators or clinic employees, Benczkowski said. Thousands of people would have received the illicit prescriptions. "It's enough pills for every man, woman and child to get one dose across the five states," he said. March 29:As nation struggles with opioid crisis, workers bring addiction to the job March 28:NY attorney general updates lawsuit against opioid distributors, including OxyContin maker Some people were given treatments they did not need in order to get the prescriptions filled. Benczkowski mentioned a dentist who is accused of unnecessarily pulling a patient's teeth. The range of schemes included sending patients across state borders to see another general practitioner, writing prescriptions at different intervals rather than the originally prescribed number of days, and having patients fill prescriptions at different pharmacies. The opioid epidemic has ravaged the Appalachian region. West Virginia was first, CDC data show, and Ohio was second in the nation for overall overdose deaths. "Opioid misuse and abuse is an insidious epidemic," said John Martin, assistant administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Unfortunately, Appalachia is at the center of it." Prescription opioid overdose deaths in Ohio dropped 28% since 2001 even as the synthetic fentanyl took over and overall overdose deaths kept rising. Yet prescription opioids remain critical, Glassman said. About 80% of people who use heroin first misused prescription opioids, according to National Institute on Drug Abuse statistics. Last year, as part of a nationwide healthcare fraud enforcement action, federal officials announced charges against 162 people for suspected roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other narcotics. Doctors at two Hamilton, Ohio, medical clinics that prosecutors called “pill mills” were among those charged. At one of the clinics, Cincinnati Centers for Pain Relief, officials said patients were often prescribed fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine and other highly addictive drugs without being seen by a doctor. Across America, almost 218,000 people died from overdoses related to prescription opioids from 1999 to 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2017 than in 1999. Follow Terry DeMio, Dan Horn and Kevin Grasha on Twitter: @tdemio, @danhornnews and @kgrasha<doc-sep>
Dozens of medical professionals in five states, including doctors who allegedly traded prescriptions for sex, were charged with participating in a scheme in which they prescribed more than 32 million opioids and other dangerous narcotics, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. Those indicted include 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners, seven other licensed medical professionals, and others who owned, operated or worked at clinics. The charges involve more than 350,000 illegal prescriptions written in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to indictments unsealed in federal court in Cincinnati. Several pharmacists and a doctor in Ohio who is alleged to have at one time been the highest prescriber of controlled substances in the state, are charged with operating an alleged “pill mill” in Dayton, Ohio. Between October 2015 and October 2017, the pharmacy allegedly dispensed more than 1.75 million pills. U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman, of the Southern District of Ohio, speaks beside members of Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force, during a news conference, on April 17, 2019, in Cincinnati. John Minchillo / AP A doctor in Tennessee who allegedly branded himself the “Rock Doc,” is accused of prescribing powerful and dangerous combinations of opioids and psychoactive drugs, sometimes in exchange for sexual favors over the span of almost three years, officials said. The doctor allegedly prescribed approximately 500,000 hydrocodone pills, 300,000 oxycodone pills, 1,500 fentanyl patches and more than 600,000 benzodiazepine pills. Another doctor in Tennessee is charged with controlled substance violations for allegedly prescribing approximately 4.2 million opioid pills — sometimes in dangerous combinations with other drugs — including to known addicts. A doctor in Alabama is accused of recruiting prostitutes and other young women with whom he had sexual relationships to become patients at his clinic, while simultaneously allowing them and their associates to abuse illicit drugs at his house, federal prosecutors said. The charges include unlawful distribution or dispensing of controlled substances by a medical professional and health care fraud. Most of the defendants face charges of unlawful distribution of controlled substances involving prescription opioids. In October 2017, President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national health emergency, directing federal agencies to use resources to fight the crisis. “The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement Wednesday. West Virginia leads the nation in drug overdose deaths, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows, followed by Ohio. West Virginia had an age-adjusted drug overdose death rate of 57.8 per 100,000 people, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Almost 218,000 people died from overdoses related to prescription opioids from 1999 to 2017 — the latest year that federal overdose data is available. The opioid epidemic in the United States claimed the lives of 47,600 people in 2017, five time the amount it did in 1999, according to the CDC.