More than 50 medical professionals charged with illegally prescribing and distributing opioids

According to news from the U.S. Department of Justice, 60  defendants across 11 federal districts, including 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners, and seven other licensed medical professionals, are being charged for their alleged participation in the illegal prescribing and distributing of opioids and other dangerous narcotics and healthcare fraud schemes. 

Also, since June 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services says it excluded over 2,000 individuals from participation in Medicare, Medicaid and all other Federal healthcare programs, which includes more than 650 providers excluded for conduct related to opioid diversion and abuse.

“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 prepared statement. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 130 Americans die every day of an opioid overdose. 

To help fight the crisis, in December 2018, the Justice Department launched a new initiative in its Criminal Division called the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force (ARPO) which was involved in the takedown.

The Justice Department explained that the ARPO Strike Force encompasses prosecutors and data analysts, prosecutors with the 10 U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the region, including the newly added Western District of Virginia, and special agents with the FBI, HHS-OIG and DEA. It operates from two hubs based in the Cincinnati, OH/Northern Kentucky and Nashville, TN areas and works closely with other state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, State Medicaid Fraud Control Units.

The mission of the ARPO Strike Force is to identify and investigate healthcare fraud schemes in the Appalachian region and surrounding areas, and to effectively and efficiently prosecute medical professionals and others involved in the illegal prescription and distribution of opioids.

Since July 2017, the DEA has issued 31 immediate suspension orders, 129 orders to show cause, and received 1,386 surrenders for cause nationwide for violations of the Controlled Substances Act.

“We will not stand by and allow the harmful and oftentimes deadly practice of over-prescribing highly addictive drugs to continue unchecked,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Hess. “The FBI will pursue medical personnel who misuse their positions of trust to blatantly disregard others’ very lives for their own financial gain.”