‘No questions asked.’ Pharmacist sentenced as part of pain-pill ring in Kentucky.
A pharmacist convicted of being part of a conspiracy to illegally distribute pain pills in Eastern Kentucky has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Jackson Noel, also known as Jackie Noel, also must pay $100,000 in restitution, according to U.S. Attorney Robert M. Duncan Jr.
Noel, 62, operated Buffalo Drug in Buffalo, W.Va., which was a favored spot for members of a drug ring based in Eastern Kentucky to fill prescriptions they’d gotten from a shady doctor in Virginia, according to court records.
That doctor, Joel Smithers, ran a pill mill, writing prescriptions for 500,000 opioid pills in two years, according to court records.
Drug addicts and traffickers from Kentucky and other states drove 12 hours or more to Smithers’ office because they knew he would give them prescriptions with little or no health examination, federal authorities said.
Smithers was sentenced to 40 years in prison in October 2019.
Darryl K. Williams headed an Eastern Kentucky drug ring that used Smithers as a source of supply, according to court records.
Williams paid for “pill crews” to go to Smithers’ office for prescriptions and to fill some of the orders at Noel’s pharmacy, then Williams and the crews split the pills, according to his plea agreement.
It has been common for addicts from Kentucky to travel to other states to get prescriptions for pills to abuse and sell.
Prosecutors cited several red flags in the prescriptions filled at Buffalo Drug, including that they were from a doctor in another state, that the customers were from yet another state, and that the pharmacy filled them on a cash-only basis at inflated prices.
The drug ring patronized a pharmacy in Jeffersonville, Ind., and Buffalo Drug because they knew the pharmacists there “would not scrutinize their prescriptions and fill these scripts for cash with no questions asked,” Assistant U.S. Attorney W. Samuel Dotson said in one court document.
Buffalo Drug was a drive of about 130 miles from Pikeville.
Noel’s attorney, Khalid A. Kahloon, argued in a sentencing memorandum that while the evidence showed Noel filled questionable prescriptions to get a high profit, the image of him as a “brazen drug dealer” was not correct.
Noel faced up to 20 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Those guidelines are not binding on federal judges, however, allowing them to sentence outside the recommended range.
U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell sentenced Noel Wednesday in Pikeville.
