Ex-pharmacist draws 10 years for pill scheme

A Perry County pharmacist who had taken over his father’s built-from-scratch business was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison for illegally distributing opioids from his drugstore and defrauding Medicare and Medicaid.

Christopher Grant Watson, 45, who owned the Perry County Food and Drug Store when he filled a fabricated prescription for an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent on Nov. 7, 2014, was indicted in 2015 on hydrocodone-distribution and health-care fraud charges alongside 27 other people named as his co-conspirators.

He pleaded guilty Oct. 5, 2016, to conspiring to dispense hydrocodone without an effective prescription, health-care fraud and structuring bank deposits of cash to avoid reporting requirements.

The trusted pharmacist “helped spread poison and addiction in his community,” Acting U.S. Attorney Pat Harris said Wednesday. “His criminal actions contributed to one of the largest health epidemics Arkansas is facing.”

Watson, supported by family members and friends who filled half the courtroom, appeared Wednesday afternoon before U.S. District Judge James Moody. His attorney, Mark Hampton of Little Rock, had negotiated an agreement whereby federal prosecutors wouldn’t object to a five-year prison sentence as part of Watson’s agreement to immediately pay $54,000 in restitution to Medicare as part of an $850,000 judgment against him and surrender more than 100 guns valued at $110,000 to the government.

But Moody startled Watson and the crowd of supporters by rejecting the unopposed effort to allow Watson to serve five years, or 60 months, instead of the nine- to 11-year term recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

Even though Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner had just told the judge that Watson was the only one of three medical professionals she has recently prosecuted who “has really taken responsibility and is really remorseful,” Moody cited the volume of drugs involved and the number of people, particularly young people, who were involved in the conspiracy, as his reasons for rejecting the proposal.

Moody said he had also planned to impose a fine but decided against it at the last minute, considering the size of the judgment against Watson.

Hampton appeared stunned and, when asked a routine question about whether he agreed the sentence was appropriate, said, “I’m not sure.” He declined to comment to a reporter afterward.

Hampton told the judge that Watson’s family and friends had pooled their money to allow him to pay the restitution in a lump sum, thinking it would help save him from a lengthy prison term.

Watson himself had written a letter to the court expressing remorse and explaining that he began to use prescription drugs in therapeutic doses several years ago to treat severe migraine headaches “and the anxiety associated with running three pharmacies and grocery stores all while working fifty hours per week in one of the pharmacies.”

In the letter, he said that between 2010 and 2014, “my drug use increased to 25 to 30 tablets a day of different prescription narcotics such as Xanax and hydrocodone. The Xanax made me feel like nothing mattered. I was in such a dark place that I didn’t care about anything.”

Watson also spoke of his love for his wife and his 10-year-old daughter, who both once moved out of the family’s home to escape his “ridiculous” behavior.

“I have lost three businesses, my position in the community, and my ability to ever practice my chosen profession of pharmacy,” Watson wrote.

“My parents were not in good health to begin with, and the added stress of my situation has caused their health to deteriorate even more rapidly.”

Watson’s father, Tommy Watson, 68, who once owned and ran the businesses, ended up pleading guilty to a charge of misprision of a felony, for failure to report his son’s activities, and was sentenced in August to a term of two years’ probation and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

Gardner agreed that Christopher Watson “was a victim of his own addiction for a significant portion of his final year” of committing crimes and said, “It’s the government’s position that Mr. Watson has earned some sort of reduction” in his sentence.

Moody imposed fiveyear sentences for the conspiracy and structuring charges, and 10 years for the health-care fraud charge, ordering them to be served concurrently. He also ordered Watson to serve three years of probation after his release, and to participate in a substance-abuse treatment program.

Shortly after the judge ordered Watson to report to prison by Jan. 3, his wife left the courtroom in tears.

The investigation that resulted in charges against Watson began in July 2014 and was led by the New Orleans field division of the DEA. It targeted the largest sources of illegally diverted pharmaceuticals in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and was named Operation Pilluted.

The U.S. attorney’s office said Christopher Watson sold “tens of thousands of Schedule II, III and IV pills and other pharmaceuticals from the pharmacy shelves after hours and forged prescriptions to account for the missing pills,” and filled fraudulent prescriptions for pharmacy customers.

Harris said a pharmacy audit showed more than 49,000 oxycodone pills and more than 72,000 hydrocodone pills missing.