LOS ANGELES—A former physician from Orange County was sentenced June 9 to 151 months behind bars for conspiring to illegally prescribe more than 120,000 opioid pills over a six-year span without a legitimate medical purpose in exchange for cash and insurance payments.
Dzung Anh Pham, 61, of Tustin, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton, who also fined him $35,000 and ordered him immediately remanded into custody, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Pham, who owned Irvine Village Urgent Care, pleaded guilty last year to a federal charge of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
Pham and co-defendant Jennifer Nguyen, a then-pharmacist, conspired to distribute narcotics such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and amphetamine salts, according to papers filed in Los Angeles federal court.
Nguyen, 52, of Irvine, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge and was sentenced in March to 33 months behind bars and ordered to pay a fine of $10,000, court records show.
In November and December of 2017, Pham issued prescriptions to one client, a known addict, for hundreds of pills of oxycodone, prosecutors said. He also wrote prescriptions for the client’s spouse though he never evaluated her.
Pham’s plea agreement lists 18 other clients and stated that between January 2013 and December 2018, he wrote prescriptions for a total of approximately 53,693 pills of oxycodone, 68,795 pills of hydrocodone, and 29,286 pills of amphetamine salts.
When Pham was charged in 2018, prosecutors said five people who received prescriptions from the doctor died of overdoses.
