A Great Neck doctor is among 98 suspects now facing charges following a federal Drug Enforcement Administration and local law enforcement joint initiative intended to crackdown on the abuse and illegal distribution of prescription medications.
Huntington resident Dr. Eric Jacobson, whose office is in Great Neck,was charged on Wednesday with conspiracy to distribute oxycodone to individuals he knew were diverting, or re-selling, oxycodone pills to addicts, said a news release announcing the charges from the Eastern District U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Faced with the growing threat of prescription drug trafficking and abuse, this office and our partners have joined forces to coordinate our attack against a menace every bit as dangerous as trafficking in cocaine or other narcotics,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Loretta Lynch said in a statement.
Jacobson’s office was raided by DEA and Internal Revenue Service agents in December after an investigation revealed the doctor had allegedly prescribed thousands of painkillers to David Laffer and his wife Melinda Brady.
The doctor was not arrested following the raid.
Last June, Laffer and Brady killed four people while robbing a Medford pharmacy.
“The stakes could not be higher, as reflected by the murder of four people last June during a pharmacy robbery in Suffolk County, and the December shooting death of a federal agent who tried to stop a similar robbery in Nassau County,” Lynch said of this week’s round of charges.
Federal court documents filed on Wednesday said Jacobson charged an unidentified amount of people “various amounts of money” in exchange for prescription painkillers.
The buyers of the prescription drugs then sold the pills for profit, the court documents said.
Jacobson was arraigned on Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge E. Thomas Boyle on Wednesday at federal court in Central Islip.
