VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Two Virginia doctors were sentenced in separate illegal prescription-writing schemes Wednesday. Combined, prosecutors said they were responsible for adding more than half a million pills to the opioid crisis.
Gary Hartman, a Virginia Beach dentist, will spend the next nearly eight and a half years in prison for conspiracy to distribute prescription opioids and muscle relaxant pills without a legitimate medical purpose.
According to court documents, From 2014 to 2018, 48-year-old Gary Hartman was involved in an elaborate scheme to prescribe opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone pills for his personal use and the use of his co-conspirators.
Some of those people included close friends of Hartman, another dentist and impoverished individuals.
Hartman, who was a licensed Virginia dentist since 2002, would write prescriptions for oxycodone to his friends without a legitimate medical purpose, the friends would fill the prescriptions, bring back most of the pills for Hartman’s personal use and keep the remainder.
He would also promise to perform free dental work on individuals in exchange for the service of filling prescriptions of oxycodone pills written by Hartman and bringing the pills back to him for his personal use.
This conspiracy involved 766 prescriptions written for non-medical reasons and almost 40,000 oxycodone pills.
"For this person to push pills in this manner out onto the street, there's no telling the extent of the harm and the misery he's caused," United States Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia, said. "He abused his position of trust, he preyed upon individuals who were in a vulnerable situation and he absolutely betrayed his oath as a medical provider."
The other doctor sentenced Wednesday was Joel Smithers, who ran a multi-state 'pill mill' out of Martinsville. He will spend the next 40 years in prison for illegal prescription-writing crimes ultimately linked to a woman's death in West Virginia.
Terwilliger called Hartman and Smithers 'dirty docs' who are single-handidly adding to the opioid epidemic.
"This is absolutely a huge part of the problem, frankly it's one of the most despicable," he said.
Thanks to resources available to law enforcement, Terwilliger said catching these guys isn't that difficult. There's record of which doctors are prescribing these kinds of pills, and a red flag will prompt a closer look at these medical professionals.
Finding them, and prosecuting them, is only a matter of time, he said.
"I think the message is out there, and I think sentences like today help send that," said Terwilliger.
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