A Culpeper dentist will spend 28 months in a federal prison for participating in a conspiracy to illegally distribute oxycodone.
Earlier this month in Alexandria, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also sentenced Dr. William J. King to three years of supervised release, fined him $20,000 and ordered him to forfeit $150,000 for his involvement in wrongfully prescribing the painkillers.
King, 61, who has an office listed on Oaklawn Drive in the town of Culpeper, pleaded guilty Sept. 29 to one count of criminal information of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone.
Peter Carr in the public information office of the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday that Dr. King would voluntarily surrender himself to the Federal Bureau of Prisons at a later date to serve his sentence, as directed by the court’s probation office.
“Prescribing prescription drugs to people who don’t need them is no different than distributing illegal street drugs,” said U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride in a news release Dec. 18. “When abused, pain medications — particularly OxyContin — can be similar in their effect to heroin, and we have seen that as prescription drug abuse increases, so does heroin abuse.”
According to court records, the release said, during 2006 and 2007, King regularly wrote prescriptions for OxyContin and other narcotic painkillers for a young woman with whom he was romantically involved.
The prescriptions were issued “without any legitimate basis,” the U.S. attorney’s release said.
On one occasion, King wrote a prescription for the woman on a Sunday, when his office was closed, and drove her to a pharmacy in Warrenton so she could immediately fill it, according to the release. The pharmacist got suspicious and contacted police.
Court records also indicate King wrote a prescription for OxyContin in the name of a friend of the young woman so the drugs could be paid for by the friend’s insurance.
On another occasion, King wrote a prescription for the young woman’s brother to pay for babysitting services. Court records further indicate King also attempted to offset home construction costs based on OxyContin prescriptions he wrote to an employee of the young woman who worked on King’s house.
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