Dr. George Blatti has been sentenced to between 5 and 15 years in prison after pleading guilty of overprescribing painkillers and causing the deaths of five people while practicing as a doctor on Long Island (NY).
Prosecutors argued that Blatti recklessly caused the deaths of his patients by overprescribing painkillers, compounding addictions with the drugs he prescribed, and failing to listen when relatives begged him to stop.
Blatti, first charged in 2019, is believed to have been the first New York doctor to face murder charges on the theory that he acted with depraved indifference to human life. The charges were later reduced to involuntary manslaughter.
Cockroaches He treated patients from an abandoned store and wrote prescriptions from his car. The five victims died within days of seeing him.
Relatives of the victims fought back tears during the sentencing in court yesterday, he reported. Fox News. “Raising two children knowing their father died is not easy,” said Valerie Kinzer, who lost her husband, Michael.
During victim impact statements, family members asked the judge to sentence Blatti to a maximum of 15 years, arguing that while he might see the light, his deceased relatives will not.
The doctor He did not apologize to the victims’ families during the sentencing. His attorney, Jeff Groder, called it all a tragedy of incredible proportions. “My client did the only thing he could do: plead guilty and therefore accept responsibility and punishment for what he did.”
In December, urologist Francis Martinis and his wife Jessica Martinis, who appeared on the Bravo reality TV series “Below Deck,” were indicted on drug charges in New York for allegedly writing fake opioid prescriptions using the names of others. cast members of the show.
In January 2023, Marc Laruelle, a doctor from White Plains (NY), was sentenced to four years in prison in Manhattan Federal Court after pleading guilty to prescribing more than 100,000 doses of highly addictive opioids for resale on the underground market.
Months earlier, Dr. William Spencer, a physician and former Democratic Party legislator in Suffolk County (Long Island, NY), admitted to exchanging prescription pills for sexual favors with prostitutes and lying to investigators in an attempted cover-up.
In a similar case, in 2022 Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, an emergency room doctor in Hoboken, NJ, and her roommate Serge Corporan were arrested and charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking.
Previously, in late 2020, Dr. Joseph Santiamo, a doctor practicing in Staten Island (NYC), admitted to soliciting sexual favors from young patients in exchange for prescribing opioids, federal authorities announced.
And in another sting operation, psychiatrist Dr. Leon Valbrun and physician assistant Po Yu Yen were arrested for illegally prescribing highly addictive drugs without a legitimate medical purpose, in exchange for cash in Manhattan.
2024-01-23 17:34:00
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