ALBANY, NEW YORK – Christopher Viagrande, age 42, of Latham, New York, pled guilty to distributing controlled substances outside the course of professional practice and for no legitimate medical purpose.
United States Attorney Carla B. Freedman and Special Agent in Charge Frank A. Tarentino III, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), New York Division, made the announcement.
Viagrande admitted that from May 2021 through January 2024, he issued a total of 149 controlled substance prescriptions, to a total of five people, for no legitimate medical purpose. Viagrande also admitted to improperly issuing an additional 28 controlled substance prescriptions, to two people, from June 2019 to April 2020. Nearly all of the prescriptions were for amphetamine.
Viagrande admitted to prescribing dangerous amounts of amphetamine to someone (identified in court papers as “Individual-1”) who was not seeing him for patient visits in 2023 and 2024, while he also failed to keep medical records for Individual-1 and ignored indications that she was abusing the drug.
Viagrande also admitted to regularly prescribing amphetamine to “Individual-2” at Individual-1’s request, even though Individual-2 was never his patient. Viagrande admitted to ignoring indications that Individual-1 was picking up Individual-2’s prescriptions at pharmacies.
At sentencing, before Senior United States District Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., Viagrande faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million, as well as at least 3 years of post-imprisonment supervised release. A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other factors.
As part of his plea agreement, Viagrande surrendered his DEA registration, which had allowed him to prescribe controlled substances.
During January 1995 through December 2019, the US news media reported on a total of 372 physicians who were involved in opioid-related criminal cases
Five individuals have been charged in connection with the 2023 death of actor Matthew Perry, according to the US Attorney’s Office.
The charges, announced Thursday morning at a news conference in Los Angeles, come after investigators say they uncovered an underground network of drug sellers and suppliers they allege are responsible for distributing the ketamine, a potentially deadly drug, that killed Perry.
The beloved actor who starred as Chandler Bing on “Friends” died in October 2023 at the age of 54. Perry was found floating face down in a stand-alone jacuzzi at his Pacific Palisades home. The actor died as a result of “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office autopsy report.
The annual number of criminal cases against physicians charged with opioid-related offenses reported in the US news media increased from 0 in 1995 to 42 in 2019. Of the 372 physician defendants in these criminal cases, 90.1% were male, 27.4% were 65 years and older, and 23.4% were charged in Florida. Of the 358 physician defendants with known clinical specialty, 245 (68.4%) practiced in internal medicine, family medicine, or pain management. Drug trafficking was the most commonly convicted crime (accounting for 54.2% of all convicted cases), followed by fraud (19.1%), money laundering (11.0%) and manslaughter (5.6%). Of the 244 convicted physicians with known sentences, 85.0% were sentenced to prison with an average prison term of 127.3 ± 120.3 months.
Our study also found that the vast majority of physicians involved in these criminal cases were male and worked in private practice.
Misuse and overdose of opioids is a public health crisis in the United States and many other countries. From 1999 to 2018, nearly 450,000 people in the United States died from overdoses involving prescription opioids (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020; Hedegaard et al., 2020). The opioid epidemic was triggered in the 1990s by physician overprescribing of opioid analgesics (Brady et al., 2014; Chihuri and Li, 2019; Hedegaard et al., 2020; Li and Chihuri, 2020). While a significant proportion of those prescriptions might be well-intentioned, clinical treatment for a variety of pain syndromes, there are some medical professionals who prescribe and dispense opioid prescriptions for personal profit. It is illegal for physicians to prescribe a controlled substance with no legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice (Rigg et al., 2010). Such physicians can be charged with drug trafficking and face severe legal consequences (Rigg et al., 2010). Physicians and clinics responsible for these illegal prescriptions are colloquially known as “pill mills,” common characteristics of which include physicians prescribing narcotics without conducting physical examinations or consulting medical records, allowing patients to pick their own medicine, treating pain with pills only, prescribing a set number of pills and giving the patient a specific date to return for more, accepting cash only and crowded waiting rooms (Rigg et al., 2010). These physicians have played an important part in perpetuating the opioid epidemic in the United States (Kennedy-Hendricks et al., 2016).
During January 1995 through December 2019, the US news media reported on a total of 372 physicians who were involved in opioid-related criminal cases, exclusive of reports on 12 physicians involved in civil lawsuits for negligent opioid prescribing behaviors. There were no opioid-related criminal cases against physicians reported in the US news media between 1995 and 1998. Of the 372 criminal cases covered by the US news media, 231 (86.3%) occurred between January, 2010 and December, 2019, and nearly a quarter (23.4%) occurred in Florida, followed by Pennsylvania (12.1%), Georgia (6.5%), West Virginia (5.6%), Ohio (5.4%), New York (5.4%) and Tennessee.
Our study also found that the vast majority of physicians involved in these criminal cases were male and worked in private practice. While men are known to be more prone than women to commit crimes (Burton et al., 1998), private practice presents a work environment that is less strictly regulated and supervised than hospitals. It is also noteworthy that over a quarter of the criminal cases included in the study involved physicians aged 65 years and older. As of 2018, about 17% of US physicians were older than 65 years
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