A Chicago woman who worked as an administrative assistant at a medical practice in a city suburb is headed to jail after pleading guilty last year for writing fraudulent opioid prescriptions.
According to a news release by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Amanda Biesiada, 39, of Alsip, Ill., pleaded guilty last year to one count of knowingly and intentionally dispensing controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.
“The opioid epidemic has devastated the lives of countless individuals through addiction and overdose,” Assistant U.S. Attorney G. David Rojas argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum, according to the DEA news release. “(The) defendant contributed to this national crisis by helping make opiates available to an individual who otherwise would not and should not have had access to them.”
Last month, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. handed Biesiada a sentence of a year and a day in federal prison, according to the DEA news release.
According to the DEA news release, Biesiada worked at Hinsdale Orthopaedics in Westmont, Ill., where she worked as an administrative assistant. The release noted that she was not a licensed physician and could not lawfully write prescriptions without a doctor’s orders.
The DEA noted in the news release that Biesiada wrote 85 prescriptions to a friend for hydrocodone, oxycodone, and other controlled substances, claiming it was done on behalf of six doctors at the practice when in reality they didn’t authorize the prescriptions. The release noted that she tried to hide what she was doing by marking the prescriptions as filed in error in the practice’s system.
