Man stole doctors’ identities to illegally prescribe thousands of drugs, feds say
A Maryland man was the mastermind behind a yearslong fraud scheme in which federal prosecutors said he and others used doctors’ stolen identities to illegally issue at least 5,600 prescriptions for a variety of narcotics, including opioids.
The prescriptions for oxycodone, promethazine with codeine and other drugs were picked up by Benjamin Jamal Washington’s co-conspirators at pharmacies in the Los Angeles area and throughout the U.S., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
About 560 prescriptions were sent to pharmacies in Central California, court documents say.
The prescribed drugs were then “sold for a significant profit” as part of the scheme, which lasted from September 2020 to May 2023, prosecutors said.
Now Washington, 25, of Hyattsville, Maryland, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a Sept. 5 news release.
He is facing up to 42 years in prison, including a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence on the charge of aggravated identity theft, according to prosecutors.
Washington’s retained defense attorney, Owen Roth, declined McClatchy News’ request for comment Sept. 8.
To impersonate different doctors, Washington and others working with him learned their personal information, including their names and dates of birth, as well as professional information, including their National Provider Identification numbers and Drug Enforcement Administration Registration numbers, prosecutors said.
His co-conspirators would then get ahold of fake drivers’ licenses issued in the doctors names and their actual phone numbers, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors said they obtained doctors’ phone numbers by paying “corrupt telephone company employees to perform illegal subscriber identity module (SIM) swaps – fraudulently inducing a phone carrier to reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber to a phone controlled by the co-conspirators.”
On July 2021, Washington said he would pay someone $300 each time she did a SIM swap, according to his plea agreement.
Washington and his co-conspirators used the fake driver’s licenses and the doctors’ actual phone numbers to create fake “e-prescribing accounts” to submit illegal prescriptions for different narcotics, according to prosecutors.
One person involved in the scheme is accused of speaking with a pharmacy technician to learn how doctors typically submitted prescriptions online.
The information they learned helped Washington and other co-conspirators “avoid detection and issue more fraudulent prescriptions,” prosecutors said.
Washington’s plea agreement mentions one occasion in September 2021 in which he flew from Dulles International Airport in Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport to physically pick up illegal prescriptions he had submitted.
Washington was investigated by the FBI and the DEA.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 13.
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