Tustin doctor pleads guilty to illegally prescribing more than 120,000 opioid pills – Orange County Register

A Tustin doctor whose prescriptions were linked to a driver who killed an off-duty Costa Mesa firefighter and the suspected gunman in the mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks on Friday, Oct. 7, confessed to the conspiracy guilty of distributing controlled substances after being accused of illegally prescribing more than 120,000 opioid pills over a six-year period.

dr Dzung Ahn Pham, the owner of Irvine Village Urgent Care, distributed the pills without legitimate medical purpose in exchange for cash and insurance payments, according to his agreement.

If he is sentenced on January 6, 2023, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

From January 1, 2013 to December 17, 2018, Pham wrote prescriptions for approximately 53,000 oxycodone pills, 68,000 hydrocodone pills and 29,000 pills of amphetamine salts using 18 different patient names, his settlement said.

Pham colluded with Jennifer Thaoyen Nguyen, 51, a licensed pharmacist who operated Bristol Pharmacy in Irvine, who also agreed to plead guilty to the same offense later this month, court documents show.

Pham referred his patients to Nguyen’s pharmacy to fill his prescriptions because he knew other pharmacies would not, according to court documents.

Nguyen accepted payments from Pham’s patients and gave the payments to Pham, her plea agreement said.

In November 2018, Stephen Taylor Scarpa pinned and killed veteran Costa Mesa firefighter Mike Kreza while Kreza was pedaling along Alicia Parkway in Mission Viejo. At the time of the crash, prosecutors alleged that Scarpa had narcotics prescribed by Pham in his system. Scarpa was convicted of second-degree murder last year.

In December 2018, federal prosecutors alleged that drugs prescribed by Pham were found in the possession of Ian David Long, the suspected gunman who carried out the Borderline Bar & Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks that killed 13 people.

Pham was not charged in connection with Kreza’s death, the borderline shootings, or any alleged overdose deaths related to the prescriptions.