Martin Escobar, age 57, of Youngstown, Ohio, was indicted by a federal grand jury in a 145-count indictment charging the unlawful distribution and dispensation of controlled substances, causing the deaths of two patients, maintaining a drug-involved premises, healthcare fraud, and unlawfully distributing and dispensing a controlled substance to a person under the age of 21. The indictment alleges that between March 2015 and May 2019, Escobar prescribed opioids and other controlled substances out of his medical office, including opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, often in combination with benzodiazepines and stimulants, all outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.
The indictment further alleges that to support his illegal prescribing, Escobar engaged in the following conduct, among other things: used false diagnoses; falsified patient pain intensity scales in medical charts; increased dosages of controlled substances and prescribed them for prolonged periods without evidence of efficacy; failed to adequately investigate patients’ pain complaints; failed to consider treatment options other than controlled substances; and falsely claimed in patient charts to have performed extensive physical examinations of patients. The indictment also alleges that Escobar ignored the results of patients’ urine drug screen tests, many of which were performed in Escobar’s medical office and that Escobar billed the government for. In addition, the indictment alleges that Escobar committed healthcare fraud by billing and causing the government to be billed for medically unnecessary controlled substances and urine drug screen tests. The indictment further alleges that Escobar caused the deaths of two of his patients in 2015 and 2016 by unlawfully distributing and dispensing controlled substances to them that led to their deaths.
