A Waxhaw physician who let a Charlotte-based telemedicine operation use his DEA registration to churn out tens of thousands of buprenorphine prescriptions is headed to federal prison. U.S. District Judge Kenneth D. Bell sentenced 54-year-old Henry Ronald Emery Jr. to six months behind bars followed by a year of supervised release, and ordered him to repay almost $500,000 he pocketed from the scheme.
The sentencing, handed down Thursday, closes out a case that has been building for years around Church Ekklasia Sozo, a Charlotte nonprofit that marketed itself as a church while operating an online buprenorphine treatment business under the name Bupe.me, according to the Department of Justice. Emery served as the organization's medical director, a role that put his prescribing credentials at the center of a business built by former doctor Douglas Randall Smith, as detailed by MinistryWatch. Prosecutors say non-medical administrative staff at the organization collected patient fees after people filled out online questionnaires, then used Emery's DEA registration number to issue more than 25,000 buprenorphine prescriptions without any doctor-patient contact.
Buprenorphine is an FDA-approved medication used to treat opioid addiction, but it is also a controlled substance that can be abused, which is why federal law requires a legitimate medical evaluation before it can be dispensed. Federal Medicare data examined during the investigation found Emery was North Carolina's most prolific buprenorphine prescriber during the pandemic, issuing more prescriptions for the drug than 99.9% of prescribers nationwide, according to the Post and Courier.
A Church-Branded Business That Scaled Fast
Church Ekklasia Sozo's growth tracked almost exactly with the loosening of pandemic-era telehealth restrictions. The organization's revenues climbed from $700,000 in 2019 to $5.5 million in 2022, while it served more than 4,000 patients spread across 25 states, per the same MinistryWatch account. That expansion relied heavily on remote prescribing rules that federal regulators relaxed during the COVID-19 emergency, allowing the operation to scale a telemedicine addiction-treatment business under nonprofit, church-affiliated cover.
Emery's regulatory troubles predate his federal sentencing by years. In December 2023, he entered into an Interim Non-Practice Agreement with the North Carolina Medical Board to stop practicing medicine, a move that followed prior state investigations into patient overdose deaths, according to the Federal Register. Then, in September 2025, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a default final order revoking Emery's federal DEA registrations in both North Carolina and South Carolina, stripping him of the authority to handle controlled substances across state lines.
Part of a Bigger National Crackdown
Emery's prosecution grew in scope in July 2024, when a federal superseding indictment folded his case into a nationwide Department of Justice healthcare fraud enforcement action involving more than $2.75 billion in alleged false claims. That broader push has targeted telehealth-driven prescribing schemes around the country, and it places Emery's Waxhaw-based case inside a much larger federal effort to police remote prescribing of controlled substances.
Regulators have since tightened the rules that made operations like Church Ekklasia Sozo possible in the first place. In early 2025, federal authorities finalized new telemedicine regulations requiring practitioners to review 12 months of state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program data before issuing remote buprenorphine prescriptions, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The change is meant to prevent the kind of unauthorized, automated prescribing federal investigators say happened under Emery's registration, while still preserving telehealth access to addiction treatment for patients who need it.
Civil Claims Still Loom Over the Parent Organization
Separately, a former consultant filed a whistleblower lawsuit in South Carolina against Church Ekklasia Sozo and founder Douglas Randall Smith, alleging corporate tax evasion and misuse of patient fee revenues, MinistryWatch reported. That civil case remains apart from Emery's federal criminal sentencing, and it is unclear how or whether the two matters will ultimately intersect.
As part of his sentence, Emery must repay almost $500,000 that the DEA says he personally pocketed from the scheme, on top of the six months in federal prison and a year of supervised release ordered by Judge Bell. WSOC-TV first reported the sentencing news, capping a case that stretched from a Waxhaw doctor's office into a sprawling, multi-state telehealth prescribing operation.
