A Maryland man pleaded guilty Friday to running a fraud scheme in which he impersonated doctors to create bogus e-prescribing accounts that generated phony prescriptions for narcotics that were dispensed at pharmacies in Los Angeles and elsewhere and resold on the street for “significant” profits.
Benjamin Jamal Washington, 25, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The defendant admitted that after obtaining doctors’ personal information, he and his accomplices acquired drivers’ licenses in their names and paid corrupt telephone company employees for access to physicians’ phone numbers, according to federal prosecutors.
Washington and others then used the information to open sham e-prescribing accounts in the physicians’ names. One member of the crime ring spoke with a pharmacy technician to learn the complexities of electronic prescriptions so the suspects could avoid detection and engender more illegal prescriptions, court papers show.
Once the imposters opened the fraudulent accounts, Washington and others submitted at least 5,600 deceptive prescriptions for such narcotics as oxycodone and promethazine with codeine, according to the plea agreement.
The suspects then traveled to drugstores across the United States, including pharmacies within Los Angeles and Orange counties, to pick up the illegally prescribed drugs, which they resold for significant profits, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu scheduled a Jan. 13 sentencing hearing, at which time Washington will face up to 42 years in federal prison, including a mandatory two-year consecutive prison term for the aggravated identity theft count, prosecutors noted.