Dallas doctor found guilty of illegally selling opioid prescriptions

A Dallas doctor accused of writing opioid prescriptions to undercover agents posing as patients has been found guilty in federal court, according to a news release.

Leovares Mendez, 58, was found guilty of six counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance and one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. He will be sentenced at a later date and faces up to 140 years in federal prison, according to the news release from the United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas.

Codefendant Cesar Pena-Rodriguez, 56, pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. His sentencing is scheduled for April 22.

Mendez and Pena-Rodriguez wrote “numerous prescriptions” without any real medical purpose and outside of usual professional practice standards, the news release said. They included those for hydrocodone, alprazolam and tramadol prescribed to undercover agents who paid the doctors $250 in cash.

They sold the prescriptions to the undercover agents across 24 visits, according to the new release. Evidence presented at the trial showed Mendez wrote prescriptions after performing “only minimal or perfunctory medical evaluations during short visits, some only lasting one minute.”

The agents created undercover videos that “showed a pattern of the officers requesting the medications by name with no complaint of pain,” according to the news release. Mendez coached the undercover agents on what to say if they were ever contacted by law enforcement regarding the illegal prescriptions.