2 N.VA. DOCTORS LINKED TO DELUGE OF ILLEGAL DRUGS

Patients Resold Painkillers; Half-Dozen Deaths Probed

Eighteen people who illegally sold large amounts of OxyContin and other
powerful prescription painkillers have pleaded guilty to drug charges in
federal court over the past two months and for the first time have openly
implicated two Northern Virginia doctors in widespread conspiracies to put
the drugs on the black market.

In court proceedings and documents filed in U.S. District Court in
Alexandria, federal prosecutors and investigators have publicly identified
the doctors as the sources of hundreds of thousands of pills later sold
throughout the region and deep into Appalachia. Prosecutors in court have
called the doctors conspirators who acted as hubs of two separate sales
schemes.

The pleas have come from patients of William E. Hurwitz, who recently
closed his McLean practice after learning that he was a target of the
investigation, and Joseph K. Statkus, also a target and operator of a pain
clinic in Centreville. Information and grand jury testimony from the
patients have allowed investigators to get closer to the doctors, who
authorities say prescribed thousands of OxyContin pills a month each, in
some cases without performing medical examinations. The pills then wended
their way to abusers in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,
where an epidemic of abuse has ravaged small towns.

OxyContin, a mainstream pain remedy approved by the Food and Drug
Administration, was prescribed more than 6 million times last year, but it
has come under intense scrutiny recently as its abuse has become widely
documented. The Drug Enforcement Administration cites 146 cases in which
OxyContin was verified as the direct cause of death or a contributing
factor and 318 deaths in which OxyContin was most likely involved -- a
total of 464 deaths linked by investigators to the drug.

Hurwitz and Statkus acknowledge that they are targets of the investigation
but say that they have done nothing wrong, that they were duped by phony
patients and that they have provided valuable services to chronic pain
sufferers through their clinics.

The nationwide investigation, which involves more than a dozen federal
agencies and scores of local and state law enforcement officials, is also
focusing on more than a half-dozen deaths believed to be connected to
prescriptions written by the doctors, including a woman who died in Fairfax
County in 2000 and another -- Mary Ruth Nye, 45 -- who died of a suspected
overdose in Prince William County six weeks ago.

Federal law enforcement sources said prosecutors will try to use those
deaths to trigger death penalty statutes under drug kingpin laws if they
are able to obtain indictments against the doctors.

"Through willful blindness, deliberate ignorance, if not intent, the
pain-management physicians in McLean and Centreville would give obscene
amounts of pills to the spokes of the wheel, if you will," Assistant U.S.
Attorney Gene Rossi said Dec. 13 during plea hearings for three patients.
Rossi alleged that the patients received drugs from the doctors with little
or no medical treatment, filled the prescriptions at local pharmacies and
sold them at enormous profit.

Law enforcement sources say investigators have found no evidence of any
kickbacks, and both doctors say they have received no such incentives.

It is a complex and intricate probe that officials say is breaking ground
because it centers on licensed and reputable doctors prescribing legal
drugs. Prosecutors must show that the doctors are prescribing OxyContin to
patients who do not need it, largely for financial gain. Investigators say
the doctors charge their patients monthly maintenance fees as high as $250
and enter into agreements with independent pharmacies to avoid questions
about why they prescribe thousands of pills.

Hurwitz called the investigation a political one that veers away from law
enforcement and into how doctors do their jobs. "The ethical dilemma is:
What can you do? You don't ask a patient if they've committed adultery or
cheated on their taxes," Hurwitz said. "But in this particular area,
doctors are expected to have perfect knowledge of everything a patient
does. That presumption is invalid. Nobody could treat pain if they're going
to hold doctors to that standard."

DEA and FBI agents along with a regional drug task force raided both
doctors' offices Nov. 6, when agents also raided Hurwitz's home and a
pharmacy in The Plains for files and financial records.

"We've done nothing wrong," Statkus said shortly after the raid. "I think
this is just another attempt to rattle me. This is a fishing expedition
hoping that they find something, and there's nothing to find. I'm just
trying to help people."

But sources say prosecutors are homing in on the deaths of several of the
doctors' patients. Nye's death Nov. 4, in particular, has caught their
attention because she went to both doctors and was given large doses of
OxyContin and morphine for back pain that other doctors had suggested could
be relieved with surgery, according to her family.

Within 18 months, the drugs had Nye bedridden, and she resorted to forging
checks and pawning household items to buy OxyContin, said her husband,
Paul. She ultimately depleted her family's savings after her health insurer
found the drug doses to be suspiciously high and scaled back its coverage.

"Her body was beaten up by all of the drugs, and there was nothing left of
her to fight it," Paul Nye said. Her dosage of the drug increased more than
1,200 percent over a year of treatment. This summer, she was issued
prescriptions for 2,100 80-milligram OxyContin pills a month, according to
medical records provided by Nye's attorney.

"There was no doubt that she was addicted to the drug, and it was the
doctors who set her on that path," her husband said. "They didn't force her
or stuff the pills down her throat, but they gave her what they gave her,
and she took it. She thought it had to be okay because it was coming from a
doctor."

Local officials have turned the case over to federal authorities, who are
waiting for a toxicology report.

Mary Nye, who originally went to a local doctor for a broken wrist, needed
to boost her pain medication when she slipped and fell in a Manassas
grocery store in 1999. She first went to Statkus, who prescribed hundreds
of OxyContin pills, the medical records show. He stopped seeing her in
summer 2000, when she allegedly tested positive for another drug. She then
went to Hurwitz.

In her initial questionnaire at Hurwitz's office June 27, 2000, Nye wrote
that she was taking two 40-mg and two 80-mg OxyContin pills -- or 240 mg --
each day. Hurwitz sent her home with a monthly prescription for 200 80-mg
pills -- an average of more than 530 mg a day, more than double her
previous dose, the medical records show.

"That was just the tip of the iceberg," Paul Nye said. "I didn't know what
OxyContin was, and I had no idea what was to come."

Ten months later, his wife was taking the equivalent of 1,800 80-mg pills
every three to four weeks -- almost 7,000 mg a day -- and was zombielike,
unable to perform basic functions. Her husband said she was high all the
time, stumbling, unwilling to consider alternatives to the drug. When Nye
no longer could afford the pills, Hurwitz gave her 21 prescriptions for 100
80-mg pills each month, to allow her to buy them as she could.

"The 100-pill lots were to facilitate her purchasing limits," Hurwitz said.
"We knew she was in a squeeze."

Hurwitz said he had no reason to believe that Nye was not using the drugs
responsibly.

When Nye's medication got low, it appears she abused the pills she had. Her
family found straws in the house that they believe were used to snort
crushed pills.

"I told her that I thought this would kill her," Paul Nye said. "She didn't
care about anything -- she just wanted her drugs. If she had been able to
see what she was doing to the family, it would have hurt her terribly. She
was blind to it. We sat down and begged her because it had gone far enough.
She was so hooked, she didn't know how to get off."

Other patients have told authorities that they went to Hurwitz and Statkus
without any need for medication and left with large prescriptions, court
records show. Every few weeks, they went back for more, in some cases
getting tens of thousands of pills in just a few months. OxyContin sells on
the street for about $1 a milligram, making an 80-mg pill worth $80.
Federal authorities estimate that the conspiracy netted millions of dollars.

Patients would "obtain obscene amounts of pills, and the doctor would act,
at best, willfully blind to [a] request for more and more 'Oxy' pills,"
Rossi, the federal prosecutor, said in court Dec. 13. The patients "would
fill those prescriptions at a pharmacy and then would distribute them to
other people. That's the conspiracy."