Kentucky city council member giving up $600K in cash, assets in drug case
A Kentucky city council member will give up more than $600,000 worth of cash and assets as part of his guilty plea in a drug case.
Calvin Manis, who has served a total of more than 20 years as a city council member in Barbourville, pleaded guilty last week to conspiring to illegally distribute drugs.
A man charged with him, John Pasternak, pleaded guilty this week to the same charge.
Manis operated Parkway Pharmacy. He admitted that he filled prescriptions for pain pills, or had employees fill them, from people he knew were involved in diverting the drugs to illegal sales, according to his plea agreement.
Pasternak admitted he “sponsored” people in the drug business — meaning he paid the costs for other people to get prescriptions from doctors and fill them, even driving them to appointments at times.
In some cases, people that Pasternak sponsored gave him some or all of the pills they received and he sold them, according to his plea agreement.
In others, the people who got the pills sold them and gave Pasternak money, the plea agreement said.
That kind of arrangement has been common in Kentucky for some time. It often involves people suffering an addiction to drugs who are taking part in order to get pills.
Manis acknowledged that Pasternak “frequently communicated” with him filling prescriptions for people Pasternak was sponsoring.
At times, Pasternak took prescriptions written to other people and filled them at Manis’ pharmacy, according to his plea.
“Based on Pasternak’s communications and actions, (Manis) knew that these controlled substances were being diverted,” Manis’ plea agreement said.
Manis acknowledged being part of the conspiracy from December 2015 through August 2019.
In that time, Manis or his employees dispensed more than 35,000 pain pills to people “related to the conspiracy,” his plea agreement said.
The document said Manis agreed to forfeit the pharmacy property to federal authorities. It is valued at $425,000, according to the Knox Count property-tax rolls.
Manis further agreed not to oppose the government’s seizure of $216,764 in the pharmacy’s bank account.
In his plea deal, Pasternak agreed to a judgment of $250,000 to the government.
The maximum penalty for each man on the conspiracy charge would be 20 years, though sentences are often below the statutory maximum under advisory guidelines.
Manis’ plea also acknowledged his relationship with a case involving eight Tennessee doctors charged in an alleged drug conspiracy in Kentucky.
In that case, the doctors allegedly wrote prescriptions for people from Kentucky with little examination, with at least some of the drugs going to sponsors such as Pasternak to be sold on the black market.
Manis said in his plea that he filled “a number of illegitimate prescriptions” written by doctors associated with EHC Medical Offices PLLC, which had clinics in Harriman and Jacksboro, Tenn.
Manis said he recognized that the dosages, combinations and amounts of drugs in the prescriptions were not legitimate, and knew some EHC patients were illegally selling the drugs they received.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Wier has not yet formally accepted the guilty pleas from Mains and Pasternak, but Magistrate Judge Hanly A. Ingram recommended he do so.
This story was originally published March 10, 2021 at 10:19 AM.
