Summaries diverge on doc, 93, co-defendants

Dr. Henri Wetselaar was described as both a greedy pill peddler and, alternatively, a gullible old man Tuesday when federal prosecutors and defense attorneys gave closing arguments in the 93-year-old doctor’s drug trial.

The trial — against Wetselaar, medical assistant David Litwin and local pharmacist Jason Smith — has dragged through federal court for nearly three months, and Tuesday’s closing arguments lasted six hours. Jurors are expected to begin deliberations Wednesday.

“Greed has never been this dangerous,” Assistant U.S. At- torney Andrew Duncan said in his closing argument to the jury. “As dangerous as Wetselaar and Litwin scooping up cash in exchange for powerful … prescription opioid prescriptions. As dangerous as drug dealers having a safe place to go to fill those prescriptions … Lam’s pharmacy and Jason Smith.”

Over the course of a year, Duncan said, “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of oxycodone pills were distributed on the streets by drug dealers and consumed by addicts as a result of the three men on trial. Authorities say Wetselaar, who also faces money laundering charges, reaped a quarter-million dollars off the prescription painkiller operation.

Defense lawyer Jeffrey Setness, meanwhile, countered that Wetselaar prescribed oxycodone and Xanax in good faith for a legitimate medical purpose. He said his client was duped by hardened street criminals who took advantage of the doctor’s perhaps misguided medical principles.

“What does good faith mean?” Setness said. “When we are born and the experiences we went through growing up.”

Wetselaar is a World War II veteran who authored a book titled “Facing a German Firing Squad.” He was born six years after the end of World War I, PILLS,