BENSALEM DOCTOR HELD, ACCUSED OF ILLEGALLY SUPPLYING NARCOTICS

Authorities Say He Was Prescribing The Addictive Painkiller OxyContin.

Richard Paolino, 57, a longtime Bensalem physician, was jailed under $8
million bond yesterday on charges that he practiced medicine illegally,
freely writing thousands of prescriptions for powerful painkillers such as
OxyContin, much of it resold at huge profits on the streets of Philadelphia.

State Attorney General Mike Fisher and Bucks County District Attorney Diane
Gibbons said Paolino, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, was the source of
more than 1,200 prescriptions for OxyContin and the sedative Xanax from
Nov. 1 through March 1 alone.

"He was prescribing to drug addicts," said Steve Moran, Bensalem's director
of public safety. "He was prescribing death."

"The charges are erroneous," said Paolino, who was smiling as he was driven
to the Bucks County prison from his arraignment. He added that any misuse
of the medications he prescribed was the fault of users.

According to the affidavit of probable cause, a former employee of
Paolino's, Corrie Clifford, told investigators she left his practice
"because Paolino was writing prescriptions for OxyContin and Xanax for
anyone that wanted them, including children as young as 15 years old."

Alarmed area pharmacists tipped off the attorney general's Bureau of
Narcotics Investigation as early as August that they were seeing a large
number of prescriptions from Paolino for OxyContin and Xanax.

Fisher said OxyContin, a controlled substance, is a highly addictive
painkiller that can produce heroin-like effects.

"We know that he was flooding the area with drugs like this," Gibbons said.

"He is an absolute menace to society to have been prescribing this amount
of OxyContin in this amount of time," said Lisa Backenstoss, Bucks County
senior deputy district attorney.

Sources told investigators that OxyContin and Xanax being sold on the
streets of Fishtown, Kensington and Port Richmond areas of Philadelphia
were coming from "a Dr. Paolino's office in Bensalem," according to the
affidavit.

One unnamed source, the affidavit said, "stated the pills are worth a lot
of money on the street; $20 to $40 per pill, depending on the milligram of
the pill." Pharmacists usually charge $4.50 for one 40-milligram pill and
$8 for one 80-milligram pill.

Pharmacist Ron Hyman of Esterson's Pharmacy in the Fishtown section said in
an interview yesterday that he challenged Paolino directly over how much
OxyContin the physician was prescribing for welfare patients.

"The scripts I saw out of Paolino were for four times a day," Hyman said
yesterday. "If any pharmacist sold more than two pills a day, they filled
it incorrectly" by medical standards, he said.

When he called Paolino last summer to discuss the prescriptions, he said,
the physician told him " 'You don't want to fill it, don't fill it. I will
find another pharmacy who will.' "

The pharmacist said, "At that point, I decided I wasn't filling any of
these. I said, 'You're going to end up killing somebody.'"

He said he then called the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

"In the one month I probably saw 30, 35 prescriptions for about 120 pills
each, none of which got filled. Every single person gave me a welfare card."

He said he also notified insurance companies of the problem.

Investigators said they visited Paolino's office at 3554 Hulmeville Rd.
several times, observing male and female patients crowding a waiting room
for hours to get prescriptions for the medications, paying $59 to $66 in
cash for office visits that usually involved no examinations.

"Most of the patients were gaunt, their eyes were dilated, and their faces
were sunken like they were on drugs and irritable as if they were going
through withdraw," investigator John Walczak said in the affidavit.

At least one cell-phone drug deal overheard by investigators in Paolino's
parking lot was described in the affidavit.

One man waiting to see Paolino told an undercover investigator, "The doctor
will work with you, he'll give you what you want," according to the
affidavit, and that Paolino "is cool and knows what you're here for."

Paolino's medical license was suspended on Nov. 23 because he failed to pay
medical malpractice insurance as required by law, said Kevin Harley, a
spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office.

The license expired on Oct. 31, he added.

Paolino, the widowed father of two grown sons, was charged with two counts
of delivery of a controlled substance, practicing medicine without a
license, and forgery, Harley said.

District Justice Leonard Brown, who set the $8 million cash bail at the
doctor's arraignment, said to Paolino, "If the charges are true, not only
do you present a danger to society, you are a threat to society."

Paolino was taken into custody by officers about 11 a.m. The officers said
that they were forced to pry open the door of Paolino's office when their
repeated knocks were ignored.

At least one of Paolino's employees watched the arrest, said Sean Connolly,
a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office. Gibbons said several
patients arrived as investigators searched the physician's office, seizing
patient files and billing records.

OxyContin, a powerful painkiller often prescribed for cancer patients, has
recently become a popular street drug, Harley said. Users crush and either
snort or inject the drug for a high similar to that of heroin, he added.

Charles Warner, assistant deputy chief of the state Bureau of Narcotics
Investigations, said Paolino was advised in November that he could no
longer prescribe medications, but continued to do so.

In 1991, Paolino was ordered to pay $254,190 to four former female
employees who won a federal sexual-harassment suit against him, charging
that he made sexual comments to them, kissed them and touched their waists
and buttocks.

Court records show that Paolino and his wife, Elaine, declared bankruptcy
in 1985; creditors said the couple owed them $4 million.

The bankruptcy filing followed the collapse of a Paolino project to convert
the old William Tennent High School in Warminster into a retirement community.

Elaine Paolino died in January 1997 at age 49 after a brief illness.