Former anesthesiologist Wendell Mark Street was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for improperly prescribing the opioid oxycodone.
In a sentencing memorandum, Street said the federal prosecution was a waste of time because he had already settled a criminal case brought by California and was no longer a threat to public safety. The case has also unnecessarily been delayed 10 years, Street argued.
“(Street) violated his position of trust by selling prescription, thereby placing the lives of his patients at risk,” prosecutors argued in their sentencing memorandum.
Street graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1981, and completed a pain fellowship at Johns Hopkins University and Medical Center in 1987, according to his memorandum. He received his California medical license in 1987, and worked as an anesthesiologist first at Kaiser Fontana Medical Center, then at Kaiser Riverside Medical Center from 1987 to 1992. He was a commander in the medical corps, U.S. Naval Reserve, from 1984 till 2005, when he declined to be deployed to fight in Iraq and received an honorable discharge. He practiced private pain medicine from 1994 through 2012, and opened up a Victorville office in 2012.
Street said he attended six medical seminars between 1992 and 1996, hosted by pharmaceutical companies, that falsely stressed that the newly formulated pain medications were non-addictive. His visits to these seminars, some in Las Vegas, caused him to develop a gambling addiction that interfered with his work, he continued. He would only go to his Victorville office two days a week, and some of the prescriptions were not made directly by him, his letter said.
“My office, my staff, my prescription pad, my responsibility,” he ended his letter to the court.
Undercover agents from the Medical Board of California, with an informant, received oxycodone prescriptions from Street on Aug. 1, 2013. He gave each of them, for $300, individual prescriptions for 150 pills containing 30 mg of oxycodone each, and an additional prescription for alprazolam.
According to the government’s sentencing memorandum, he did not conduct a physical examination, establish diagnostic testing, provide a treatment plan or document the need for the prescriptions.
On Aug. 29, 2013, the agents returned to the office and received new prescriptions for the same drugs, even though they did not meet Street that day or explain their reasons for the prescriptions.
California brought an action against Street in February 2015. To settle the criminal charges, he agreed to surrender his medical license on Feb. 23, 2016.
A Grand Jury filed their indictment against Street Feb. 9, 2018. He pleaded guilty to two counts of knowingly prescribing and distributing oxycodone in violation of federal law Aug. 8, 2019.
“Because Dr. Street was removed from the practice of medicine by the State of California, he longer was a threat to anyone’s health but the federal government apparently in order to chalk up another ‘victory,’ brought this case at the very last minute against Dr. Street,” his memorandum says.
Street prescribed 437,000 doses of oxycodone, the federal prosecutor’s office said, although it did not claim all those prescriptions were improper.
Case information
Case No. 5:18-cr-00047
United States District Judge George Wu presided.
Assistant United States Attorney Jason Pang of the Major Frauds Section prosecuted.
Read the indictment here.
Read Street’s sentencing memorandum here.
Read the government’s sentencing memorandum here.
