A Miami doctor has been found guilty of running a drug mill out of his clinic after a jury convicted him on multiple counts of unlawfully dispensing controlled substances.
After a seven-day trial, Osmin Morales, 72, from Weston, was convicted on Jan. 12 on one count of conspiracy to unlawfully dispense and distribute controlled substances, and six counts of unlawful dispensing following a probe by the DEA. According to evidence at trial, Morales ran a so-called pain management clinic, dealing out prescriptions for potent drugs like oxycodone, morphine, and the tranquilizer alprazolam – commonly known as Xanax – often without any legitimate medical need, or even without seeing patients.
The court heard how Morales, at times, wasn't present in the clinic when prescriptions were being issued, even pre-signing scripts that office managers handed out in exchange for cash payments. A testimony revealed the office took about $4,000 daily from these transactions. "Doctor Morales issued prescriptions for controlled substances without examining the patients, often when he was not even present in the clinic", as the Justice Department statement highlighted.
During the trial, former patients and family members expressed their concerns to Morales about the excessive prescriptions, with one patient's mother begging him to stop prescribing narcotics to her daughter, as she was becoming dysfunctional. Despite her pleas, he continued. Records from the DEA indicated that Morales prescribed opioids to more than a thousand patients during the indictment period, many having criminal backgrounds relating to drug dealing, and nearly one-third of them had criminal records related to drug dealing.
A pain medicine expert witness testified that patient records from Morales's clinic showed no proper medical basis for opioid prescriptions, and that the combination of drugs Morales regularly dished out posed a significant overdose risk. "None of the patient medical records he had examined contained any proper medical basis for the use of opioids, such as oxycodone or morphine, nor any basis for the use of benzodiazepines, such as alprazolam", the expert said in court, according to the Justice Department.
Morales is now facing a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each charge. His sentencing is scheduled for April 17. This case was a collaborative investigation between the DEA's Miami Field Division and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with assistance in prosecution from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Frank Tamen, Theodore Joseph O’Brien, Emily Stone, and Mitchell Hyman handling asset forfeiture.
