Pennsylvania doctor sentenced to 12 months in prison for illegally selling prescriptions from new jersey office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 19, 2012

 

TRENTON, N.J. – Dr. Augustine S. Lee was sentenced today to one year and one day in prison for illegally selling Percocet prescriptions from his Trenton office, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

Lee, 70, of Holland, Pa., previously pleaded guilty to an Information charging him with distribution of oxycodone, a Schedule II controlled substance, without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the usual course of professional practice. Lee entered his guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan in Trenton federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Lee admitted that in November of 2010, he wrote a Percocet prescription for a patient who came to see him at his Trenton office in exchange for money. Lee admitted that he did not conduct any physical examination of the patient, nor obtain any medical history. At the outset of the investigation, law enforcement received a tip that Lee was selling prescriptions out of the front window of his Stuyvesant Avenue office, resulting in increased pedestrian traffic in the area.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Sheridan sentenced Lee to three years of supervised release and entered a consent order of forfeiture for $33,000.

U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the N.J. Division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Robert G. Koval, and the Trenton Police Department, Police Director Ralph Rivera Jr., for the investigation leading to today’s sentencing.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sarah M. Wolfe and Jennifer Davenport of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Trenton.

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Defense counsel: Brian P. Reilly Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Trenton

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