United States Drug Enforcement Administration

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – Earlier today, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Mustafa Goklu, also known as “Mustangy,” of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business as part of a scheme to launder the purported Bitcoin proceeds of drug trafficking. The verdict followed a four-day trial before United...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A Nixa, Mo., physician was sentenced in federal court today after taking bribes from a drug manufacturer in exchange for prescribing its fentanyl drug to his patients so often that he ranked highest in the state in net sales of the product. Randall Halley, 65, was sentenced...

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White on Wednesday sentenced an osteopathic physician from Collinsville, Illinois, to a year in prison for illegally prescribing an anti-anxiety drug. Matthew Steven Miller, 43, wrote prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Xanax for six people who were not his patients between 2016...

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber sentenced on Thursday a doctor from Town and Country, Missouri, to a year in prison for a health care fraud scheme and ordered him and his wife to repay $235,977. On over 1,000 occasions spanning nearly a decade, Dr. Abdul Naushad...

NEWARK, N.J. – Susan A. Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New Jersey Division, Scott J. Lampert, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations-New Jersey Field Office, Patrick J. Hegarty, Defense Criminal Investigative...

WASHINGTON – A federal court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting a Tampa-area physician from prescribing opioids and other controlled substances, the Department of Justice announced today. In a complaint filed on July 18, and unsealed yesterday, the United States alleges that Dr. Neelam Taneja Uppal unlawfully wrote opioid prescriptions...

WASHINGTON – A federal court ordered a Tampa-area pain management clinic to close and directed the clinic’s owners and its former physician to collectively pay $600,000 in civil penalties pursuant to agreed resolutions in a case alleging violations of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the Justice Department announced today. In...

MINNEAPOLIS – A Minneapolis woman has pleaded guilty to misappropriating and adulterating prescription morphine while working as a pharmacist. According to court documents, on October 30, 2019, Jennifer Lee Draheim, 42, a pharmacist at Coburn’s Pharmacy in Ramsey, removed a bottle of morphine sulfate from the Scheduled Drug Cabinet and...

CHICAGO — Robert Bell, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Chicago Division, and U.S. Attorney John R. Lausch, Jr., for the Northern District of Illinois, announced that a suburban Chicago physician prescribed opioids to patients without a medical examination or visit and then fraudulently billed Medicare...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Alexander M.M. Uballez, United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, announced today that Joe’s Pharmacy of Peralta, New Mexico, has agreed to pay to the United States $50,000 representing civil penalties under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The agreement settles civil claims against Joe’s Pharmacy...