Pa. doc charged in drugs-for-sex plan
Posted: August 21, 2013 - 4:23am
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A western Pennsylvania doctor has surrendered on charges he overprescribed anti-addiction and anti-anxiety drugs and traded them for sex with female patients before his offices were raided and closed last year.
Dr. Thomas Radecki, 67, of Clarion, was arraigned on charges including overprescribing medicines and running a corrupt organization, and freed on $25,000 bond until a preliminary hearing Sept. 3.
State prosecutors said Radecki ran much of his allegedly illegal operation out of his home, which he frequently shared with female patients. That's also where Radecki stored the prescription drugs he dispensed, which were worth about $5 million, based on the street prices he charged at his all-cash practice during 2011 and the first five months of 2012, investigators determined.
"Radecki referred to his residence as an 'income-sharing commune' and repeatedly invited female patients to move in with him there," the grand jury found.
Radecki would first move his new girlfriend/patient into an apartment across the street, then into his home as he jettisoned whichever woman was currently living in his home, the grand jury found. Radecki's girlfriends also allegedly worked at his clinics and were given money and drugs including Subutex, used to treat opiate addictions.
Additionally, investigators determined Radecki had installed video cameras in his treatment room and office in Clarion, about 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, and recorded sexual contact with one female patient.
Radecki couldn't be reached for comment at a home phone number listed in his name, and a secretary said his defense attorney was not immediately available.
The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine said last year that Radecki voluntarily surrendered his medical license because of unprofessional conduct linked to the investigation, which wasn't fully revealed until the state attorney general's office filed charges Tuesday based on a grand jury presentment.
Before surrendering his license, Radecki had offices in Clarion, Dubois, Kane and Seneca and opened a clinic in Dubois in March 2012 where he claimed to be dispensing medicines to wean people off of heroin and similar drugs.
Radecki's clinics operated under the name Doctors and Lawyers for a Drug Free Youth and prescribed Subutex as well as Adderall and Ritalin, which are stimulants commonly used to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders.
Radecki was the biggest distributor of those three substances in Pennsylvania in 2011. In the first five months of 2012, before his clinics were raided and closed, Radecki was the biggest Subutex distributor in the United States, state drug agents determined.
Radecki charged his patients $3 for each Subutex pill, and netted $280,000 in profits from that drug alone in 2011, the grand jury determined. Radecki made his patients pay cash for the drugs, even if they had private insurance or Medicaid, the grand jury found.
Most of Radecki's patients didn't need or use the drugs they purchased from him, instead reselling them in the communities near Radecki's clinics.