DOCTOR WAS PILL PROVIDER, U.S. SAYS

A Coral Springs physician was arrested Thursday by federal agents after a
four-year investigation into alleged fraud and illegal dispensation of
prescription drugs - drugs, officials say, used in the overdose deaths of
as many as 20 people, including a Boca Raton man.

Dr. Barbara Mazzella, 61, was charged with eight felony counts and was
being held Thursday at the Federal Detention Center in Miami, said a
spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Investigators say Mazzella's in-house pharmacy ranked first or second among
the nation's ordering pharmacies for several drugs, including the
depressants Seconal, Tuinal and hydrocodone. Her office's pharmacy served
only Mazzella's patients - a "highly unusual" and profitable situation -
according to an affidavit filed Thursday by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

FBI agents seized records Thursday from Mazzella's office as part of an
investigation led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services.

Mazzella - whom state regulators have cited at least three times since 1993
- - is charged with mail fraud, health-care fraud and making false statements
to private health insurers and the federal Medicare program, the affidavit
said. She also is charged with conspiring to illegally dispense controlled
substances - prescription narcotics, barbiturates and stimulants - and
illegally dispensing the drugs.

Officials said Mazzella prescribed addictive drugs to patients who came to
her with real or fabricated medical complaints. Some patients reported
becoming addicted and up to 20 died of overdoses, federal prosecutors said.
While many deaths were ruled suicides, several were deemed accidental,
prosecutors said.

Investigators reported Mazzella was billing private insurers and Medicare
for injections, X-rays and office visits that hadn't occurred.

If convicted, Mazzella faces up to $4 million in fines and life in prison,
prosecutors said. Her office could not be reached for comment late Thursday
afternoon.

Mazzella received her bachelor's degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University
in New Jersey in 1964 and received her medical degree from the University
of Rome in Italy in 1969, according to state records. She also has a
registered nurse degree, records show.

>From 1970 to 1974, according to records she gave the state, she served a
residency in internal medicine in Englewood, N.J. Florida granted her a
license to practice medicine in 1980.

In December 1993, state regulators filed an administrative complaint
against Mazzella, accusing her of "gross malpractice." Two years later,
Florida's Board of Medicine reprimanded Mazzella for not giving adequate
care to patients who died, but did not fine her, according to state records.

On Feb. 27, 1996, the board fined Mazzella $3,500, reprimanded her and
ordered her license suspended for six months, according to state records.
But Mazzella's license was not suspended because the board allowed her to
fulfill a one-year probation term instead, state officials said.

It was during her probation that Richard Bransdorf, 36, of Boca Raton went
to see Mazzella for treatment of depression, according to his father,
Marvin. Bransdorf had been married for seven years, had a 5-year-old son
and managed his father's Madison Avenue Shoes store in Mizner Park.

Mazzella's office billed Bransdorf's insurance company for 12 visits from
July 1995 to March 1996, the family said. At each visit, he was given
multiple prescriptions for the pain relievers Percocet and Lorcet, the
anti-anxiety drugs Xanax and Valium and cough suppressant Tussionex,
according to the affidavit. On his last visit on March 22, 1996, he was
given Tussionex, 90 Valium pills, 30 Xanax pills and 90 Lorcet pills. Both
Lorcet and Tussionex can be addictive.

Bransdorf died the next day of an overdose of the combined drugs, according
to the Palm Beach County medical examiner. His death was ruled an accident.

Bransdorf's father said the family hadn't had enough evidence to sue
Mazzella over the death of his son, one of four boys.

"When he wasn't on drugs, he was everybody's best friend," he said. "He was
the life of the party."

Staff researchers Lynne Palombo and Philip Pettijohn contributed to this
story.