Anissa Maroof, a physician from Potomac, Maryland, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for unlawfully distributing and dispensing controlled substances. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang in Greenbelt, Maryland. Following her release from prison, Maroof will be subject to two years of supervised release, with the first nine months served under home detention.
The announcement came from Kelly O. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, along with Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office and Chief Marc R. Yamada of the Montgomery County Police Department.
According to court documents and Maroof’s guilty plea, she distributed Alprazolam (Xanax), Amphetamine-dextroamphetamine (Adderall), and Buprenorphine between January 2019 and June 2022 outside the scope of professional practice and not for legitimate medical purposes.
Maroof owned a medical practice in Bethesda and was board certified in addiction psychiatry. She held a Drug Enforcement Administration registration number that allowed her to prescribe controlled substances.
Through her practice, Maroof provided prescriptions for these drugs to patients from West Virginia without warning them about potential risks associated with combining medications. She continued prescribing controlled substances even after some patients disclosed they were selling excess medication illegally.
The investigation found that Maroof often prescribed drugs without providing therapeutic services or seeing patients beforehand. On several occasions, she called prescriptions into pharmacies and instructed patients to leave cash payments under her office door before writing their prescriptions. She also advised some on how to fill prescriptions at multiple pharmacies.
"U.S. Attorney Hayes commended the FBI and MCPD for their work in the investigation," according to the press release. "Ms. Hayes also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher Sarma and Elizabeth Wright who prosecuted the federal case."
More information about resources offered by the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office is available at https://www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach.
