CHARLESTON, WV—United States Attorney Booth Goodwin announced that Robert Timothy Hogan II, D.O., pled guilty today to two drug-related felonies. Hogan, 32, from Coolville, Ohio, faces up to nine years’ imprisonment when he is sentenced on January 12, 2015.

At the plea hearing, Hogan admitted that he travelled between Ohio and Wood County, West Virginia and that he used his cell phone to facilitate an arrangement in which he wrote prescriptions for controlled substances to an individual who was not his patient and for which there was no legitimate medical purpose in return for receiving half of the pills when the prescriptions were filled. Between January 2013 and February 2014, Hogan wrote more than 160 illegal prescriptions for more than 17,000 pills.

The case was investigated by the West Virginia State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case is being prosecuted as part of an ongoing effort led by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia to combat the illicit sale and misuse of prescription drugs and heroin. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, joined by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, is committed to aggressively pursuing and shutting down illegal pill and heroin trafficking, eliminating open air drug markets, and curtailing the spread of opiate painkillers and heroin in communities across the Southern District.