KY doctor wrote drug prescriptions without exams, delivered them in parking lots
A Kentucky doctor who wrote prescriptions for pain pills for people he hadn’t examined has pleaded guilty to illegally distributing drugs.
Scotty R. Akers, 48, who practiced in Pikeville, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty on four charges.
His assistant and wife, Serissa Akers, 33, pleaded guilty to three counts of unlawful distribution of controlled substances and also faces up to 20 years, according to the court record.
Akers once practiced at a clinic called Pikeville Sports, Spine & Pain Center, but stopped in August 2016.
However, he kept writing prescriptions for pain drugs for former patients, according to his plea agreement.
In some cases, Akers wrote prescriptions for people without physically examining them. The people contacted Akers or his wife through calls, texts or Facebook to request prescriptions, according to his plea.
Sometimes people came to Akers’ apartment to get the prescriptions, and sometimes he or his wife met people in parking lots to give them the orders for drugs.
They charged $50 or $75 for the prescriptions at times, according to the court record.
Akers learned in November 2017 that the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure was investigating his prescribing practices, but kept writing prescriptions.
Between late November 2017 and May 2018, he wrote prescriptions for more than 8,800 opioid pills.
Akers “deliberately ignored” the fact that the prescriptions were not issued within the usual course of professional medical practice, or was aware of a high probability that they weren’t, his plea agreement said.
Akers and his wife admitted they kept almost no records on the people who received the prescriptions, allowed people to get early refills and didn’t take any measures to prevent abuse and illegal sales of the drugs by the people who got them, U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr. said in a news release.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Wier denied requests for Akers and his wife to remain free pending sentencing in November.
The state Medicaid fraud unit, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigated.
Scotty and Serissa Akers were indicted during a larger drug and fraud investigation that resulted in charges against dozens of people in seven states, including more than 30 doctors.
