BIRMINGHAM - A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a physician to 87 months in prison for illegally prescribing opioid painkillers, announced United States Attorney Jay E. Town, Drug Enforcement Administration-Birmingham Assistant Special Agent in Charge Clay Morris and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Holloman.
United States District Judge L. Scott Coogler sentenced STEVEN BRUCE HEFTER, 61, of Vestavia Hills, to 87 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release and was directed to forfeit more than $38,000. Hefter must report to the Bureau of Prisons on June 30th.
Hefter pled guilty in December 2017 to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances outside the usual scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose. The charge arose from Hefter’s involvement between 2012 and 2016 with the now defunct clinic Cindy Dunn & Dr. Buckingham, M.D., Weight Loss Clinic and Pain Management (CDPM) in Moody, Alabama.
“The opioid crisis in the United States accounts for the overdose deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every year," Town said. “This sentence puts on notice any medical provider that justice will find you, from the street corner to the clinic. There is no hiding behind the white coat or white shoes. You will be caught, you will be prosecuted and you will occupy a federal prison bed. We will even leave the light on for you."
“Today’s sentence should serve as a warning to any medical professional considering exploiting their patients for profit: you will be caught, you will be prosecuted, and you will pay a steep price," said Thomas J. Holloman, Special Agent in Charge IRS Criminal Investigation, Atlanta Field Office. “IRS-CI remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to bring those seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of their patients, to justice."
“As always, DEA stands ready to protect our citizens, families and often time our children from the devastating effects from the criminal diversion of opioid based drugs." Morris said. “We will not allow physicians who have abandoned their Hippocratic oath to continue to poison our communities. The DEA and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively investigate those who choose profit over patient care."
In early 2018, Hefter surrendered his Alabama medical license and his federal Drug Enforcement Administration registration authorizing him to prescribe controlled substances.
Hefter was a cardiologist by training, with no specialization in pain management. Nevertheless, he worked for CDPM as a pain management physician. CDPM was a pill mill. The cash-only clinic received anywhere from 40 to 80 patients in a single day. The primary method for treating pain was by writing multiple prescriptions for high doses of potent and addictive opioids, usually oxycodone, for months and years without offering any other modes of treatment. According to Alabama’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, which tracks the dispensing of controlled substances, during the span of approximately four months in late 2015, Hefter wrote 2,785 prescriptions for 279,665 opioid pills. The vast majority of Hefter’s prescriptions were pre-signed and issued to patients while Hefter was absent from CDPM. CDPM patients were rarely, if ever, examined properly. CDPM didn’t even have a patient examination table. Many patients were either drug addicts or were diverting their pills to the street.
“This sentence should serve as a warning to unscrupulous doctors who abuse their prescribing authority and put lives at risk for financial gain, said Assistant United States Attorney Mohammad Khatib, “You are not above the law, and when you are caught, justice awaits."
This case was a multi-agency investigation by the DEA and IRS-Criminal Investigation as part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force operation. Assistant United States Attorney Mohammad Khatib prosecuted the case.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
