By FRED SHUSTER
City News Service
RIVERSIDE (CNS) - Four people, including a Riverside County doctor,
were arrested Thursday in the Southland on federal charges of diverting dangerous
narcotics -- primarily highly addictive opioids -- to the black market.
The arrests were part of Operation Hypocritical Oath, a yearlong U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration-led probe targeting doctors, physician
assistants, nurse practitioners and clinic operators suspected of illegally
providing controlled substances to so-called patients and black market
customers in violation of their oaths to ``do no harm,'' federal authorities
said.
Those arrested Thursday were:
-- Dr. Michael Anthony Simental of Corona, 47, who practices at the
Kaiser Permanente facility in Riverside. He faces federal charges of illegally
distributing hydrocodone, an opioid found in drugs such as Vicodin. Prosecutors
said the investigation into Simental began after one of his patients died of a
drug overdose last June.
-- Dr. Reza Ray Ehsan of Bel-Air, 60, who faces charges of unlawfully
selling controlled drugs to an agent posing as a patient during undercover
meetings in December and January. According to an affidavit, Ehsan bought
wholesale quantities of painkillers, allegedly selling more than 700,000 pills
in 2015 and 2016 out of his office, and did not report the sales.
-- Saloumeh Rahbarvafaei of Northridge, 40, a nurse practitioner
employed at several locations, including the Good Neighbor Clinic in Leimert
Park. According to the criminal complaint, undercover agents allegedly
purchased prescriptions from Rahbarvafaei during five separate transactions
last year.
-- Ana Leblanc of Chino Hills, 33, who worked at a Santa Ana clinic
for two weeks last year. She is charged with fraudulently obtaining
prescription drugs. According to a criminal complaint, Leblanc, who has no
authority to handle or prescribe controlled substances, used a prescription pad
from her employer to write prescriptions for controlled substances, including
oxycodone, to herself and others.
``We are in the midst of an opioid crisis that has caused untold
anguish and death,'' U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said Thursday at a press
conference in downtown Los Angeles. ``Some in the medical community are stoking
the fires, flooding our communities with prescription opioids.''
In cases filed over the past week, prosecutors charged doctors, a
physician assistant, and a nurse practitioner with illegally writing
prescriptions, sometimes with the knowledge that their so-called patients were
addicts. In other cases, corrupt practitioners took advantage of their insider
status to obtain illicit narcotics.
Gabriel Hernandez of Anaheim, 58, a physician assistant who works at a
Long Beach pain management clinic known as Vortex Wellness & Aesthetics,
was arrested Wednesday pursuant to a criminal complaint that charges him with
distributing oxycodone without a legitimate medical purpose.
Over a two-year period that ended in November, Hernandez prescribed
nearly 6,000 controlled substances -- more than half of which were for maximum-
strength oxycodone, which means he was responsible for 446,000 oxycodone pills
being dispensed, according to court documents.
Hernandez allegedly often wrote prescriptions for drug cocktails known
as the holy trinity -- a narcotic, a tranquilizer and/or a muscle relaxant -
- which are sought out by drug addicts and are particularly dangerous because
of the threat of fatal overdose, according to the affidavit in support of the
complaint.
In 2017, according to records maintained by the state of California,
Hernandez wrote a prescription for the three drugs to a 41-year-old man who
died a week later from the combined effects of alcohol and two of the
prescribed drugs, according to the criminal complaint. A San Diego pharmacist
contacted investigators late last year about suspicious and identical
prescriptions Hernandez wrote to three people who appeared to be living in the
same house over a hundred miles away from the Vortex clinic.
A medical expert who reviewed data on Hernandez's prescription history
and tapes of two office visits by a law enforcement source concluded that
Hernandez's ``actions are much closer to that of an illegal drug dealer than
that of a physician, and the patient visits are a sham,'' court papers show.
``The vast majority of those in the medical field are good, honest
people -- but the MD after your name does not immunize you from prosecution,''
Hanna said.
Monica Ann Berlin, 41, of Del Mar, a former employee at a doctor's
office in Beverly Hills and who is presently with a Del Mar-based company that
offers perioperative care services, was arrested a week ago pursuant to a
criminal complaint charging her with distribution and possession of a
controlled substance. Berlin allegedly stole a signature stamp and prescription
pads belonging to the doctor who employed her, and she used them to write
fraudulent prescriptions and distribute controlled substances to others.
Between April 2015 and April 2017, Berlin allegedly forged at least 44
prescriptions for controlled substances that another person filled at
pharmacies in Beverly Hills and Rancho Santa Fe. In exchange for the drugs,
Berlin's buyer allegedly treated her to lavish dinners and bought her gifts.
According to the complaint, Berlin sent text messages to her buyer using coded
language by describing the drugs as candies and Tic Tacs.
As a result of Operation Hypocritical Oath, 41 licensed doctors are no
longer able to practice, nine practitioners have been arrested and charged
and more than $3 million has been seized, said William Bodner, deputy special
agent in charge of the DEA's Los Angeles office. He added that 15 deaths have
been related to targets of the investigation.