A federal judge on Wednesday scheduled a plea hearing for next month in the case of a Charleston neurologist charged earlier this week with violating a controlled substance record keeping law.
Dr. Iraj Derakhshan is accused of failing to report or record information regarding the dispensing of a Schedule II controlled substance to a patient. The charge was filed Monday in the form of an information which can't be filed without a defendant's consent and typically means a defendant has agreed to plead guilty.
U.S. District Court Judge John Copenhaver set a plea hearing for April 6. Prosecutors had asked the judge Tuesday to schedule a "guilty plea hearing" for the beleaguered doctor. The charge Derakhshan faces carries a maximum four-year prison sentence.
Last month, the West Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the neurologist's medical license for three years, finding that he failed to keep appropriate medical records and had provided improper instructions for the use of controlled substances. Derakhshan has appealed the suspension to a Kanawha Circuit Court judge.
Derakhshan was stripped last June of his DEA registration number, which is needed to prescribe drugs, after ranking several times among the top prescribers of controlled substances in the state and also being the subject of complaints and lawsuits containing allegations of over prescribing addictive painkillers.