An 80-year-old suburban Philadelphia doctor was sentenced to serve five years in prison for his role of distributing opioids for non-legitimate medical purposes.
Myron Rodos of Ambler, Pennsylvania, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and must pay a $300,000 fine for distributing controlled substances.
In November 2019, he pleaded guilty to distributing Schedule II controlled substances. He was charged with four counts of the crime.
In exchange for money and sex, Rodos allegedly distributed 3,670 10-miligram pills of methadone and 6,130 30-miligram pills of oxycodone to patients. The defendant was a physician operating out of a North Philadelphia medical practice at the time he committed the crimes.
That practice has been termed a “pill mill,” because the physician prescribed controlled substances that are addictive and dangerous to various patients who are addicts. In many cases, the U.S. Attorney’s office alleged that Rodos exchanged the pills for sexual favors.
Jennifer Arbittier Williams, the acting U.S. Attorney on the case, said her office as “committed to stopping drug-dealing doctors like Rodos.”
In a statement, she said Rodos knew how dangerous the drugs he was prescribed could be, yet he gave them out anyway to addicts because of his greed.
The special agent in charge of the investigation at the Philadelphia Division of the FBI, Michael J. Driscoll, said it was “hard to understand how a longtime physician, trained to help and to heal people, could be this depraved.”