Feds are against dismissal of Ohio pill-mill charge

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

A woman convicted of running a pill mill that illegally prescribed thousands of painkillers protected her patient base by making sure the office didn’t turn away clients visiting multiple doctors looking for drugs, government prosecutors allege.

To do that, Nancy Sadler told an employee to stop putting notes in the files of patients suspected of “doctor shopping,” according to a government filing in federal court.

Sadler, 49, also directed the production of fake patient files to speed up the examination process to allow the pain management clinic she and her husband operated to make as much as $20,000 a day, prosecutors argued.

Nancy and Lester Sadler asked a federal judge last week to throw out the most serious charge they were convicted of, which carries a penalty of up to life in prison. They say the government failed to prove its case.

The couple is in custody awaiting sentencing. Clinic doctor, Brenda Banks, also is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty last spring to a charge in the case.

In response to the Sadlers’ request, federal prosecutors say the couple’s argument ignores significant evidence presented at trial.

“Nancy and Lester acted as the owners and paid the bills,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Oakley said in a court filing Wednesday. “They paid for the pills. They paid the rent. They pushed the volume of patients.”

The Sadlers were convicted last month after a federal judge forced their deadlocked jury to keep trying.

The jury convicted the couple of operating Ohio Medical and Pain Management in Waverly as a continuing criminal enterprise. The crime carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to life in prison.

The jury also convicted Nancy Sadler of one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering for the illegal purchase and sale of 40,200 units of hydrocodone in order to purchase a convertible car.

The couple’s attorneys argued in a filing in federal court that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the couple committed three different acts needed for the criminal enterprise conviction.

But Oakley said that evidence at trial revealed the couple, along with Banks, engaged in a joint business venture to distribute painkillers to patients without regard to their medical needs. That evidence was more than enough to convict the couple, he said.

“It was an assembly line prescription mill designed with the purpose to provide controlled narcotics at $150 a visit,” Oakley said.

Banks pleaded guilty in April to one count of acquiring or possessing a controlled substance by deception. She was accused of helping clinic operators and employees use her medical license to order nearly 220,000 pills of the painkiller hydrocodone.

The jury acquitted a third person at trial, clinic employee Sandy Wells.

More than a year after the Sadlers were indicted in July 2010, prosecutors alleged in trying to get the couple’s bond revoked that the Sadlers were running a second clinic in Columbus and using profits they hid from the government to take extensive gambling and shopping trips. Prosecutors said one patient died of an overdose days after obtaining pills at the Columbus clinic.

The case in Cincinnati is among several brought in recent years to help stem an epidemic of illegal painkiller distribution in southern Ohio. Statwwide, Ohio saw a record 1,544 accidental overdose deaths in 2010, with the increase attributed to prescription painkiller addictions.