Baldwin doc sentenced to 10 years in prison

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Thirty-two months after being arrested and charged with illegally prescribing oxycodone, Dr. Leonard Stambler, of Baldwin Harbor, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph F. Bianco announced the sentence on July 22. A jury convicted Stambler after a three-week trial in October 2013. At the time, his bail was revoked and he was ordered detained pending sentencing. According to U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, the government established that Stambler, 63, provided prescriptions for hundreds of oxycodone pills to two of his patients without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the course of a professional medical practice, and also conspired with those patients and assisted them in selling pills that he prescribed.

“Rather than ‘Do No Harm,’ Dr. Stambler acted as a drug dealer,” Lynch said in a statement, “putting thousands of oxycodone pills onto the streets of Long Island for no valid medical reason, even going so far as to drive his patient-friends to a drug deal.”

Stambler was arrested on Dec. 5, 2011, after he was observed meeting with patients in his car or outside their homes, investigators said. Her also reportedly left prescriptions on his patients’ front porches when he was unable to meet with them. Authorities allege that on 20 occasions between March and November 2011, Stambler provided prescriptions to people who didn’t need them or planned to resell the medications.

According to Lynch, on Nov. 21, 2011, DEA Task Force investigators observed Stambler driving a patient, Christopher Adams, to a pharmacy in East Rockaway, where the two filled a prescription Stambler had written in the name of Adams’s girlfriend, Nancy Cook. As investigators watched, Stambler drove Adams to a nearby location to meet with a third person, where oxycodone pills were exchanged for cash. Investigators stopped Stambler’s vehicle shortly afterward.

Another time, Lynch added, Stambler drove Cook, who was also Stambler’s patient, to a home in East Rockaway, where she sold oxycodone pills to the same person who was involved in the Nov. 21, 2011, incident. Both Adams and Cook testified at Stambler’s trial about his participation in the drug transactions, as well as their own destructive addiction to oxycodone.

Oxycodone is a controlled substance that may be dispensed by medical professionals only for a legitimate medical purpose. A powerful and highly addictive drug, it is often abused because of its potency when it is crushed into a powder and ingested, leading to a heroin-like euphoria.

Stambler’s attorney, Gary Schoer, declined to comment on the sentencing.