HOUSTON (KWTX) — A federal jury convicted a Texas physician for unlawfully distributing more than a million pills of opioids and other dangerous drugs.
Barbara Marino, 65, of Tomball, was found guilty of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and four counts of distributing controlled substances, according to the Justice Department. She was the sole prescribing physician at Angels Clinica, where she prescribed oxycodone, hydrocodone and the muscle relaxer carisoprodol from a clinic behind mirrored windows in a Houston strip mall.
Cash-only operation brought patients through street dealers
Many patients who received prescriptions from Marino were brought to Angels Clinica by street-level drug dealers, court documents and trial evidence showed. The dealers brought patients to Marino for prescriptions, filled those prescriptions at Houston-area pharmacies and then sold the pills on the street.
Angels Clinica operated as a cash-only clinic, charging people based on what drug Marino would prescribe them. In less than a year, Marino received more than $400,000 from Angels Clinica’s owners for writing prescriptions that lacked a legitimate medical purpose, according to prosecutors…