Marc Laruelle, a White Plains, NY, physician, was sentenced to four years in prison in Manhattan Federal Court after pleading guilty to prescribing more than 100,000 doses of highly addictive opioids for resale on the underground market.
According to prosecutors, Laruelle (65) showed “total contempt” for the damage he would inflict with his actions. The doctor pleaded guilty in October to writing thousands of prescriptions for oxycodone, amphetamines and Xanax for patients who didn’t need them between September 2016 and October 2021. Sometimes he didn’t even know the person he was ordering the medicine for.
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Denise Cote also ordered Laruelle to pay $168,027 in forfeiture, she said. Daily News.
Laruelle charged about 60 people up to $500 in cash for oxycodone prescriptions, often under the assumption that they would resell the pills illegally for profit. Prosecutors say she prescribed everyone antidepressants and made it appear as though her prescriptions were written “in the context of psychiatric treatment.”
The doctor “slowly increased the dose of oxycodone he prescribed to avoid detection of his illegal prescriptions,” Assistant US Attorney Mitzi Steiner wrote to Judge Cote before sentencing.
Laruelle was caught after he prescribed oxycodone, Adderall and Xanax to an undercover agent in late 2021. The agent told him outright that he had no medical need for the powerful drugs and had previously purchased them from “friends” and planned to resell them, according to court records.
Against the backdrop of America’s opioid crisis, which caused more than 68,000 deaths in 2020 alone, prosecutors asked Cote to give Laruelle up to nine years in prison.
Prosecutor Steiner stressed that, despite police efforts, “corrupt practitioners and doctors continue to profit” from the money made by writing bogus prescriptions for addictive drugs (…) The diversion of prescription drugs is an especially heinous crime because, By its nature, it is committed by highly educated, and often highly paid, medical professionals sworn to protect the health of their patients.”
In September, Dr. William Spencer, a physician and former Democratic Party legislator from Suffolk County (Long Island, NY), admitted trading prescription pills for sexual favors with prostitutes and lying to investigators in an attempt to cover up.
In a similar case, in March Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, an emergency room physician in Hoboken, NJ, and her roommate Serge Corporan were arrested and charged with various drug trafficking charges.
Previously, in late 2020, Dr. Joseph Santiamo, a physician practicing in Staten Island (NYC), admitted to soliciting sexual favors from young patients in exchange for prescribing opioids, federal authorities announced.
And in another sting operation, psychiatrist Dr. Leon Valbrun and physician assistant Po Yu Yen were arrested for illegally prescribing highly addictive drugs without a legitimate medical purpose, in exchange for cash in Manhattan.
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