Doctors’ Prescription Drug Ring: Multi-Million Dollar Drug-Trafficking Scheme Dismantled By Authorities
The amount of illegal prescription drugs three Detroit doctors were responsible for putting on the streets was staggering, and authorities say the medical professionals ran a $5.7 million drug ring that landed an estimated 1 million painkillers into the hands of thousands of drug addicts. As reported by the Detroit Free Press, federal prosecutors recently announced criminal charges against the doctors who are from the areas of Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield, and Harrison Township.
Police say the leader of the doctors’ prescription drug ring was a 50-year-old chiropractor by the name of Boris Zigmond. Zigmond is from West Bloomfield, a charter township in Oakland County that is located within the Detroit metropolitan area. He is described as being the leader of the operation, and authorities say he secured prescriptions for painkillers that could be filled at local pharmacies. Once the prescriptions were filled, the pills were funneled into the black market, USA Today wrote.
Federal prosecutors charged Zigmond with conspiracy to illegally distribute prescription drugs and money laundering. According to the indictment, Zigmond obtained written prescriptions from doctors for Roxicodone and Oxycodone and had been selling them on the black market since 2013. Zigmond is accused of recruiting patients and working with corrupt pharmacists who would write prescriptions for powerful opioids that were then sold on the streets.
Zigmond’s drug ring was very lucrative, and investigators say the organization made approximately $5.7 million in profits from trafficking the prescription drugs.
“Diversion of prescription pills to the street market promotes the addiction to painkillers that leads to overdose deaths,” McQuade said in a statement. “We are focusing on charging doctors, pharmacists and the networks that are putting this poison on the streets.”
The names of those who were also charged in the indictment are listed below.
- Jennifer Franklin, M.D., 39, of Harrison Township
- Carlos Godoy, M.D., 78, of Farmington Hills
- Rodney Knight, 32, of Highland Park
- Tara Marcia Jackson, 53, of Detroit
- Sashanti Morris, 44, of Detroit
- Anna Fradlis, 61, of West Bloomfield
- Maryna Pitsenko, 46, of Sterling Heights
- Svetlana Sribna, 64, of Sterling Heights
- Marina Jacobs, 44, of West Bloomfield
As indicated in a new report from state officials, drug overdose deaths in Michigan are on an alarming rise and they are up 14 percent. Heroin and painkillers are responsible for most of the drug overdose deaths, claiming the lives of 1,745 people in 2014. The report states that the total number of drug poisoning deaths statewide increased from 1,535 in 2013 to 1,745 in 2014 — continuing an upward trend since 2012 — and drug overdose was the No. 1 cause of injury-related deaths that year.
“Often, the doctors performed no physical examination of the ‘patient,’ ” the report explained. “When ‘patients’ arrived at the doctor’s office, they often had to provide a code name to the doctor’s assistant before the assistant would allow them to see the complicit doctor. Code names were provided by marketers in advance.”
This latest prescription drug ring bust occurred just a month after federal agents raided a north Georgia hospital and made several arrests in a nine-month long, multi-state Drug Enforcement Agency investigation that involved fraudulent prescriptions painkillers.
[Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
