5 isle doctors lose licenses in opioid crackdown

Federal law enforcement officials say a yearlong operation to crack down on the diversion of pharmaceutical drugs in California, Nevada and Hawaii has resulted in 41 doctors having their licenses or U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration registrations to prescribe controlled substances taken away and the seizure of $3.1 million, said John Callery, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA Honolulu Field Office.

He said five of the 41 licenses or registrations taken away were from Hawaii medical professionals. The Hawaii operation also resulted in the execution of five search warrants and seven arrests.

Callery said the effort, called Operation Hypocritical Oath, was prompted by the “overarching” opioid deaths in the Los Angeles area and across the nation. The DEA Los Angeles Field Division is responsible for federal drug-related law enforcement in California, Nevada, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan and the Northern Mariana Islands. The Hawaii effort involved multiple federal, state and local law enforcement investigations on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island.

“Although our nation is in crisis, we here in Hawaii are not in a crisis mode at this time,” Callery said Thursday at an Operation Hypocritical Oath presentation in Honolulu. DEA officials in California held a similar presentation in Los Angeles.

Nationally, more than 11 million people abuse opioids, resulting in more than 130 overdose deaths each day.

For Hawaii, “Data released by the Centers for Disease control indicate that in recent years, our overdose death rate involving opioids is not as high as it is in other jurisdictions across the country,” said Kenji Price, U.S. attorney for the Hawaii District.

Five of the arrests happened in October at the Bade Medical Clinic in Hilo. Dr. Ernest Bade, 80, and four of his employees, three of whom were a grandmother, mother and daughter from the same family, are accused of prescribing and unlawfully distributing powerful narcotics, sedatives and opioids such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, fentanyl and morphine. They are scheduled to stand trial in U.S. District Court in June.

A sixth arrest happened in March on Oahu. Tripler Army Medical Center pharmacy technician Olivia Ronquilio was charged with and later admitted stealing and distributing 8,505 pills containing five milligrams of either hydrocodone or oxycodone from the hospital’s pharmacy vault. Ronquilio, 37, is serving a one-year sentence in a federal correctional institution in California.

Callery said three other cases involve a nurse practitioner using the DEA registration of someone else to prescribe oxycodone, a dentist prescribing hydrocodone to a nonpatient and a medical doctor who was indicted for drug trafficking after he moved to Hawaii following the execution of a search warrant on his medical practice on the mainland.

Operation Hypocritical Oath is ending this month.

Price said his office will continue the effort through its crackdown on fraud in the health care industry. Recent prosecutions include the conviction and sentencing of the owner of a company that provided occupational, physical and speech therapy, and guilty pleas by a physical therapist and pharmacy salesman.