Westchester doctor who prescribed black market opioids gets 4 years in prison

A White Plains doctor who prosecutors say showed “complete disregard” for the harm he would cause by prescribing more than 100,000 doses of addictive opioids to resell on the black market was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday by Manhattan Federal Court. .

Marc Laruelle, 65, pleaded guilty in October to writing tens of thousands of prescriptions for oxycodone, amphetamines and Xanax for patients who did not need them between September 2016 and October 2021. medicine.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Denise Kot also ordered Laruelle to pay $168,027 in forfeiture.

Laruelle charged 60 people up to $500 in cash just for oxycodone prescriptions—often on the assumption that they would illegally resell the pills for profit. Prosecutors say he prescribed antidepressants to everyone to confuse and make it look like his scripts were written “in the context of psychiatric treatment.”

He “slowly increased the dose of oxycodone he prescribed to avoid detection of his illegal prescriptions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitzi Steiner wrote to Judge Kot before sentencing.

The law caught up with Laruelle after he prescribed oxycodone, Adderall and Xanax to an undercover agent in late 2021. resell them, according to court records.

In the context of America’s opioid crisis, which has killed more than 68,000 people in 2020 alone, prosecutors have pressed Cote to sentence Laruelle to nine years in prison to set an example. Steiner said that despite law enforcement efforts, “dirty doctors and medical practitioners continue to cash in” on the money that can be made by writing fake prescriptions for addictive drugs.

“The opioid epidemic has escalated dramatically over the past two decades. The opioid crisis has crippled our country and destroyed countless lives,” Steiner wrote in a government sentencing statement.

“Diversion of prescription drugs is a particularly heinous crime because, by its very nature, it is perpetrated by highly educated — and often already highly paid — healthcare professionals who are sworn to protect the health of their patients,” Steiner said.

“We are pleased with the verdict handed down by Judge Cote,” Laruel’s lawyer Gregory Ryan said. “We believe it was a fair verdict.”