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Galion Doctor Pleads Guilty to Five Counts of Prescription Fraud and Agrees to Almost $279,000 in Forfeitures

U.S. Attorney’s Office October 14, 2009
  • Northern District of Ohio (216) 622-3600

Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, announced today that, on October 13, 2009, Dr. Narendra Kumar Agrawal, M.D., age 59, a doctor who lives and formerly operated a medical office in Galion, Ohio, pleaded guilty to five counts of a Superseding Indictment before United States District Court Judge David D. Dowd in Akron, Ohio.

Specifically, the Superseding Indictment described how the defendant, a doctor specializing in internal medicine, used his “Rapid Response Medical Center” to engage, repeatedly, in the illegal distribution of controlled substances to persons seeking to abuse those drugs. Agrawal issued thousands of prescriptions for hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (Percocet), and alprazolam (Xanax) products outside the usual course of professional medical practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose, in violation of federal law. He issued prescriptions for such controlled substances during approximately 80 percent of the office visits that he conducted—far in excess of the number of controlled substance prescriptions typically issued in a legitimate internal medicine practice—and he frequently correlated the amount of money he charged his “patients” to the relative strength of the controlled substance they sought. After a period of time, most of the local pharmacies in Galion, Ohio, stopped accepting prescriptions for controlled substances written by Agrawal, therefore Agrawal frequently told the persons to whom he prescribed controlled substances to present their prescriptions to be filled at pharmacies located out of town.

Agrawal pleaded guilty to the following charges:

Count 2: engaging in a scheme between June 1, 2007 and November 24, 2008, whereby he repeatedly, unlawfully, intentionally, and knowingly dispensed and distributed hydrocodone, a Schedule III narcotic drug controlled substance, to various individuals, for a total of approximately 188,662 tablets, outside the usual course of professional medical practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose, in violation of Title 21, §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(D), United States Code, and Title 21, C.F.R., § 1306.04;

Count 3: engaging in a scheme between June 1, 2007 and November 24, 2008, whereby he repeatedly, unlawfully, intentionally, and knowingly dispensed and distributed alprazolam, a Schedule IV controlled substance, to various individuals, for a total of approximately 229,305 tablets, outside the usual course of professional medical practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose, in violation of Title 21, §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(2), United States Code, and Title 21, C.F.R., § 1306.04;

Count 4: knowingly and intentionally opening, leasing, renting, using, or maintaining a building, room, enclosure, or other place, namely Rapid Response Medical Center, 815 Harding Way West, Galion, Ohio, for the purpose of unlawfully distributing a controlled substance, specifically, by using said building, room, enclosure, or other place to issue invalid and illegal prescriptions for Schedule II through IV controlled substances in violation of Title 21, United States Code, § 841(a)(1), all in violation of Title 21, United States Code, § 856(a)(1);

Count 109/110: illegally distributing quantities of oxycodone, in violation of Title 21, §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(C), United States Code, and Title 21, C.F.R., § 1306.04.

Agrawal further agreed to forfeit $278,646.09 in proceeds obtained from his illegal drug trafficking scheme.

“The power to prescribe these medications,” said Mr. Dettelbach, “is a privilege. When a doctor abuses that power, he violates his oath to treat the sick and he breaks the law.” The actual sentence in this case will be determined by the Court under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which depend upon a number of factors unique to each case, including the defendant's prior criminal record, if any, the defendant's role in the offense and the unique characteristics of the violation. In all cases the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum and in most cases it will be less than the maximum.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Rebecca Lutzko and James Morford, following an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration in Cleveland, Ohio and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Cleveland, Ohio and Mansfield, with the assistance of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office (Sheriff Ronny Shawber) and the Galion Police Department (Chief Brian Satterfield).

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