A physician in Waxhaw, N.C., has been sentenced to six months in prison for allowing his Drug Enforcement Administration number to be used for unlawful opioid prescriptions, according to an Aug. 17 news release from the Justice Department.
According to court documents, Henry Emery, MD, was a licensed physician in North Carolina with a family medicine practice. He was also employed by Church Ekklasia Sozo, a nonprofit corporation operating as an online medical provider.
Church Ekklasia Sozo claimed to provide opioid addiction telemedicine treatment. A member of the organization’s staff would obtain a patient’s payment for the prescription, and then use a medical prescriber’s DEA number to issue the prescription.
Dr. Emery allegedly allowed his DEA registration number to be used to issue more than 25,000 buprenorphine prescriptions to patients with whom he had no personal interaction with, according to the Justice Department. In addition, Dr. Emery received $452,830 in payments from Church Ekklasia Sozo, the release said.
Following the prison sentence, Dr. Emery will serve one year of supervised release.
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