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Canfield internist pleads guilty in drug case
YOUNGSTOWN
A medical doctor, who was indicted nearly five years ago on 86 drug-related felony counts pertaining to controlled substances, has pleaded guilty to two drug-possession counts.
Those charges were reduced to first-degree misdemeanors. Dr. Waleed Mansour also was fined $2,000 and given two suspended six-month jail terms.
All other counts were dismissed in the plea agreement.
Dr. Mansour, 46, of Canfield, entered his plea Wednesday before Judge Shirley J. Christian of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Had he been convicted of all counts in the indictment, he could have faced up to 136 years in prison.
Dr. Mansour is an internal-medicine specialist, who formerly worked at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown.
“Eighty-six counts is a bit of overkill,” said Martin P. Desmond, an assistant county prosecutor, who said he inherited the case from other prosecutors.
Dr. Mansour wrote prescriptions in the names of others for drugs that were for his own use, so the case is not truly a drug-trafficking matter, Desmond told the judge.
Dr. Mansour also sought out drug-addiction treatment, Desmond added.
“I think the only victim here is yourself,” the judge told Dr. Mansour, who apologized for his actions and said his addiction issues have been under control for three years.
The first 66 counts of the indictment charged him with drug trafficking and alleged he prepared Hydrocodone, a narcotic pain reliever, for shipment or distribution between January 2007 and September 2008, or had reasonable knowledge that someone else intended to sell the prepared substance.
Counts 67 through 84 charged him with aggravated drug trafficking during the same time period and made the same allegations regarding Adderall, a stimulant used to treat narcolepsy or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Counts 85 and 86 were tampering-with-evidence charges alleging Dr. Mansour tampered with drugs June 5 and Sept. 22, 2008, at the start of the investigation of his suspected illegal activity.
In December 2013, the State Medical Board of Ohio reprimanded Dr. Mansour and put his medical license on probation for at least two years based on his failure to disclose on his license-renewal application he had been charged with a criminal offense, namely the 86-count drug-related indictment.
That board action was affirmed in September by the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. Dr. Mansour appealed to the 10th District Court of Appeals in October.
Dr. Mansour’s medical license was suspended because of his child-support debt Sept. 11, 2014, and reinstated Nov. 4, when the Mahoning County Child Support Enforcement Agency reported he was no longer in default.