From 2010 to 2015, the program, which was connected to the Hope Clinic, featured the prescription of prohibited medications such as oxycodone without a valid prescription. Prosecutors stated in a press release that certain Hope sites averaged 65 or more daily customers during a 10-hour workday with only one practitioner on duty and that some prescriptions offered up to seven pills per day.
According to the statement, four of the doctors admitted guilt to a felony count of encouraging the fraudulent acquisition of a controlled drug in Charleston federal court.
These doctors are Roswell Tempest Lowry, 88, of Efland, North Carolina; William Earley, 66, of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Brian Gullett, 45, of Clarksville, Pennsylvania; and Vernon Stanley, 79, of Fayetteville, West Virginia.
According to the statement, Mark Clarkson, 64, of Princeton, West Virginia, pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges of encouraging the misbranding of a medicine used in interstate commerce.
At a Charleston Hope Clinic in 2013, Gullett, Earley, and Stanley penned several oxycodone prescriptions for a patient. Prosecutors claimed that they admitted that the prescriptions, which were not for a proper medical reason, were not supported by the patient’s medical record.
Lowry wrote prescriptions for 180 oxycodone pills for a Hope client in Charleston in August 2014. He said that he had purposefully ignored the customer’s chart while determining whether the medicines were required. Instead, according to the statement, Lowry gave the patient the identical medications that had been written for her by prior doctors.
Gullett, Earley, Lowry, and Stanley acknowledged that the clients had admitted to drug addiction, repeatedly failed or had abnormal drug tests, purchased pills from the black market, and sold medications obtained through their Hope prescriptions to other clients. According to the statement, the doctors did not address the patients’ potential for addiction or the necessity of seeking treatment for addiction.
Clarkson acknowledged assisting Hope Clinic in filling prescriptions after big box stores ceased doing so and neighborhood pharmacies were unable to handle the demand from Hope clients. Prosecutors claim that in 2014, Clarkson wrote fraudulent prescriptions for a total of 635 oxycodone pills for five different Hope clients in Virginia, which were filled at the Adkins Pharmacy in Gilbert, West Virginia. Adkins Pharmacy consented to pay a $88,000 fine in 2020.
On December 22, the doctors will be sentenced. Up to four years in prison and a $250,000 fine are possible penalties for Gullett, Earley, Lowry, and Stanley. Clarkson may spend up to five years behind bars and pay a $500,000 fine.
The doctors, together with the owners, managers, and other doctors connected to Hope Clinic, as well as a group that oversaw Hope’s daily operations, were all charged in 2018. The other defendants are still awaiting trial.
