Brother-to-brother call: ‘You’re too late’

Ex-doctor’s sibling testifies against him

The brother of former Steelers doctor Richard Rydze testified Tuesday that Richard called him “out of the blue” one day in 2012 to ask him to lie about receiving thousands of Vicodin pills.

Robert Rydze, testifying for the government in the federal drug trial of Richard Rydze, said his brother called him at his home in Iowa in February 2012 to tell him that “if anyone inquires” to say that he had been prescribing Robert the pills to treat a foot infection that could lead to amputation.

“I said, ‘ Richard, you’re too late,” Robert said.

The FBI had been to his house three days earlier to serve him with a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, although he didn’t know the details.

“I was concerned,” Robert told the jury. “I knew he was in trouble.”

He said Richard also told him he was addicted to Vicodin, although Robert said he had never seen any signs of an addiction before.

The alleged request to lie is obstruction of justice, according to the prosecution, one of nearly 200 counts facing Richard Rydze, 66, as his trial enters its second week in U.S. District Court.

The former doctor, who left the Steelers in 2007, is accused of conspiring to distribute steroids, human growth hormone and painkillers.

Prosecutors say that he prescribed 12,728 Vicodin pills to a single patient over a seven-year span using the prescription pad of his former partner at the Steelers, Dr. Anthony Yates.

Richard Rydze had been writing the prescriptions in the name of Robert Rydze, the name of both his father and his brother.

After his father died in 2010, according to the government, he kept writing scripts in the same name. But when he found out the FBI was investigating, prosecutors say, he had to persuade his brother to lie for him.

“I was shocked,” Robert said of the call.

He said he told Richard he had already talked to an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland about the subpoena and the case and would have to appear in Pittsburgh to testify.

Robert Rydze’s testimony is part of a massive case against Richard Rydze that prosecutors outlined last week in an opening statement. In addition to the Vicodin, Mr. Rydze is accused of prescribing human growth hormone to patients with no medical need for it and having the prescriptions filled at the pharmacy of an alleged co-conspirator, William Sadowski.

He is also accused of conspiring with Brentwood business owner James Hatzimbes, also a government witness, to distribute anabolic steroids at “steroid clinics” the two men ran in Pittsburgh.

Mr. Rydze’s defense team has indicated it will not dispute much of the government’s evidence but will argue that he was addicted to Vicodin after taking it to treat a diabetic foot wound and could not form the intent to commit the crimes of which he is accused.

The trial is expected to take about three months.