A Charleston neurologist pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal record-keeping violation, admitting he dispensed a dose of a powerful painkiller to a patient and never reported it.
Dr. Iraj Derakhshan, 72, faces a maximum four years in prison when he's sentenced July 8.
"Your honor, I am convinced I am in technical violation of a statute," the doctor told U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver Jr. "I am pleading guilty."
The agreement Derakhshan made with prosecutors requires him to permanently surrender his registration number with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which is required to prescribe drugs. Derakhshan was stripped of that number last June, after ranking several times among the top prescribers of controlled substances in West Virginia.
Earlier this year, the West Virginia Board of Medicine suspended the neurologist's medical license for three years, finding that he had 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 admitted Thursday that, on June 18, 2015, a patient identified as "Patient A" brought him their remaining prescription of Fentanyl, after having an adverse reaction to the opioid drug.
That same day, Derakhshan admitted, he distributed that Fentanyl, in an unknown amount, to another patient, identified as "Patient B."
Derakhshan was never permitted to dispense drugs, prosecutors said Thursday.
The "dispensing of Fentanyl to Patient B was not lawful," Assistant U. S. Attorney Miller Bushong said. "It was not done by authorized written prescription and, therefore, not properly presented to a pharmacy to be filled, and it's dispensing, therefore, was untraceable and unrecorded by the West Virginia Board of Pharmacy."
The doctor admitted that he knowingly and intentionally didn't record the dispensing of the drug. Federal law requires doctors to keep a separate log book to track the dispensing of controlled substances.
Derakhshan previously had told the Gazette-Mail that he had turned down a plea deal offered by prosecutors, but in March, prosecutors filed the charge against him in the form of an information, which can't be filed without a defendant's consent.
As part of the deal signed by Derakhshan, prosecutors have agreed not to prosecute his wife, Djahangosha Derakhshan, "for record-keeping violations committed prior to the date of this plea agreement," federal court documents state.
Derakhshan faces a fine of up to $250,000 and could be ordered to pay restitution, Copenhaver told him.
Derakhshan sat between his attorneys, John Kessler and Mike Carey, during the plea hearing.
Derakhshan was allowed to remain out of jail to await sentencing on a $10,000 unsecured bail.
He pulled his passport out of the jacket pocket of his tan suit and turned it over to authorities, as prosecutors requested.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided Derakhshan's Quarrier Street office on Feb. 9. Investigators were looking for the medical records of 64 patients who had died from overdoses between 2010 and 2015 while under his care, a federal agent wrote in an application for a search warrant, which was unsealed later in February.
An investigation into Derakhshan's prescription history determined that the doctor wrote more than 14,000 original and/or refill prescriptions for controlled substances from July 1, 2013, to Feb. 12, 2014, including 3,100 controlled substances, the Gazette-Mail previously has reported.
As he usually does in criminal proceedings, Copenhaver asks for information about a defendant's level of education and abilities to read and write.
"You are a medical doctor so, I take it, you can read and read quite well, and write and write quite well?" the judge asked Derakhshan.
"Yes, your honor," Derakhshan answered. He then thanked the judge for assuming that he does so well.
"I was excluding 'scripts,' " Copenhaver responded.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.