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OWINGS MILLS PAIN MANAGEMENT DOCTOR SENTENCED FOR CONSPIRACY TO DISTRIBUTE DEMEROL AND HEALTH CARE FRAUD

BALTIMORE, Maryland - Richard S. Schlesinger, M.D., age 57, of Owings Mills, Maryland was sentenced yesterday to 6 months home detention with electronic monitoring and three years probation for conspiracy to distribute Demerol and health care fraud, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake also ordered that Schlesinger serve 100 hours of community service. As part of his plea agreement, Schlesinger was previously ordered to surrender his DEA registration number, and his license to practice medicine in the State of Maryland. Judge Blake ordered that Schlesinger may not move or petition the Maryland Physician’s Board for reinstatement of his license during the period of his home detention and probation.

According to the statement of facts provided to the court at his guilty plea, from November 1999 to December 31, 2002 Schlesinger operated a medical practice in Owings Mills specializing in pain management. During that time, Schlesinger conspired to distribute Demerol, and defrauded insurance companies by submitting fraudulent prescriptions for Demerol to pharmacies and causing the pharmacies to submit false insurance claims to health care insurance companies seeking payment for drugs distributed. Claims submitted to Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna and others were fraudulent because Schlesinger wrote prescriptions for Demerol to purported patients whom he had not examined knowing that the purported patient or the pharmacy would return the Demerol to Schlesinger for his own use and for distribution to others Schlesinger also allowed assistants in his office to sign his name on the prescriptions and to actually write prescriptions. Schlesinger distributed Demerol to various individuals, and used Demerol himself.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein thanked the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Maryland Board of Physicians for their investigative work in this case. Mr. Rosenstein also praised Assistant United States Attorney Robert R. Harding, who prosecuted the case.

This page last modified—June 13, 2006.